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CHINA 


LAND OF FAMINE 


WALTER H. MALLORY 


AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
SPECIAL PUBLICATION NO. 6 


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Fic. 1. A FARMER OF NORTHERN CHINA 


‘‘ There 1s no other peasantry in the world which gives such an impression of abso- 
lute genuineness and of belonging so much to the soil. Here the whole of life and the 
whole of death takes place on the inherited ground. Man belongs to the soil, not the 
sou to man; it will never let its children go. However much they may increase in 
number, they remain upon it, wringing from Nature her scanty gifts by ever more 


assiduous labour.” . : 
IKEYSERLING: The Travel Diary of a Philosopher. 


AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY ° 
SEECIAL PUBLICA TIONINOGG 
Edited by G. M. Wrictey 


CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


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| 
Very Ree eee IEC) Ray 
Secretary, China International Famine Relief Commission 


Wal eA S HO RE Wi RID ys 


1) Re) OFUNG Ea UN DESY: 
President of the American Geographical Society 





AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
BROADWAY AT IS6TH STREET 
NEW YORK 


TQ 280 









COPYRIGHT, 1926 

BY 

THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
OF NEW YORK 


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COMMONWEALTH PRESS, WORCESTER, MASS. : 


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TO MY WIFE 
ALICE EVANS MALLORY 
WHOSE INSPIRATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT 
HAVE DONE MUCH TO MAKE POSSIBLE THIS WORK 


LIS VArEECTIONATELY 


INSCRIBED 





CONTENTS 


FOREWORD BY Dr. JOHN H. FINLEY 
PREFACE 
INTRODUCTION . 


Chapter I 


ECONOMIC. CAUSES OF FAMINE 


Chapter II 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 


Chapter III 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 


Chapter IV 


SocIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 


Chapter V 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE . 


Chapter VI 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 


Chapter VII 


POLITICAL CURES FOR FAMINE . 


Chapter VIII 


SOCIAL CURES FOR FAMINE . 


PAGE 


64 


84 


107 


14! 


163 


179 





FOREWORD 


There could be no better preface to this authoritative and 
interesting work on the Land of Famine than the pictures of 
country life in the interior of China from Count Keyserling’s 
“Travel Diary of a Philosopher,’ suggesting in one paragraph 
first how famine is being constantly fought by the yellow 
men in their blue jerkins, making the very hills which they 
cultivate to their summits fortresses of defense, and then 
how famine saps its way in through the ancestral graves 
and takes the living as prisoners by reason of their devotion 
to their dead and of their unwillingness to leave them in 
order to seek their livelihood and, so, fight famine in distant 
helds. 


Every inch of soil is in cultivation, carefully manured, well and pro- 
fessionally tilled, right up to the highest tops of the hills, which, like the 
pyramids of Egypt, slope down in artificial terraces. The villages, built 
of clay and surrounded by clay walls, have the effect of natural forms in 
this landscape: they hardly stand out against the brown background. 
And wherever I cast my eyes, I see the peasants at work, methodically, 
thoughtfully, contentedly. It is they who everywhere give life to the wide 
plain. The blue of their jerkins is as much a part of the picture as the green 
of the tilled fields and the bright yellow of the dried-up river-beds. One 
cannot even imagine this flat land devoid of the enlivening presence of 
these yellow human beings. And it represents at the same time one great 
cemetery of immeasurable vastness. There is hardly a plot of ground which 
does not carry numerous grave mounds; again and again the plough must 
piously wend its way between the tombstones. There is no other peasantry 
in the world which gives such an impression of absolute genuineness and 
of belonging so much to the soil. Here the whole of life and the whole of 
death takes place on the inherited ground. Man belongs to the soil, not 
the soil to man: it will never let its children go. However much they may 
increase in number, they remain upon it, wringing from Nature her scanty 
eifts by ever more assiduous labour; and when they are dead, they return 
in child-like confidence to what is to them the real womb of their mother. 
And there they continue to live for evermore. The Chinese peasant, like 
the prehistoric Greek, believes in the life of what seems dead to us. The 
soil exhales the spirit of his ancestors, it is they who repay his labour and 


xi 


Xi CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


who punish him for his omissions. Thus, the inherited fields are at the 
same time his history, his memory, his reminiscences: he can deny it as 
little as he can deny himself; for he is only a part of it. 


’ 


“The plough among the tombstones” is the summarizing 
phrase describing China’s agriculture and ancestral worship— 
“the universal religion of the country.” Mr. Mallory, in 
speaking of the social causes of famine, says that the most 
thickly populated regions where the land is good and where it 
is most needed for agriculture are ‘‘just the districts where 
graves are most numerous.”’ This is the physical side of it, 
but deeper than that is the filial devotion which like a cen- 
tripetal spiritual force holds the descendants to the tombs 
of those who have gone before. There are natural causes, 
economic causes, and political causes which Mr. Mallory 
presents, clearly and convincingly, but down at bottom is 
this profound social cause which he recognizes and which 
must be reckoned with in dealing with the things that are 
seen. | 

As Keyserling suggests, the Chinese peasant and the early 
Greek have something in common, as this prayer of an ancient 
farmer preserved to us out of that time witnesses—the prayer 
of one who was held to his ancestral plot, inadequate though 
it was. 

To Demeter of the winnowing fan and the Seasons whose feet are in 
the furrows, Heronax lays here from a poor little plough-land their share 
of ears from the threshing floor, and these mixed seeds of pulse on a slabbed 


table the least of a little; for no great inheritance is this he has gotten 
him here on barren hill. 


The problem in China is due primarily to the fact that the 
‘‘no great inheritance’’ grows less and less for the individual 
with the multiplying of the heritors; and the multiplying 
force is the necessity, felt by the worshipper of the past, of 
“providing sufficient male children so that, in spite of the 
ravages of disease, accident, wars, pestilence or famine [to 
which the multiplying contributes] at least one will survive 
to carry on the family name and perform the necessary duties 
required by ancestor worship.” The Manchurian wheat 
fields make vain permanent appeal to those who feel this 


FOREWORD X1i1 


filial and paternal obligation, even though they may go in 
numbers to help with a season’s harvest. There is a pioneer 
belt along the northern front of China in Manchuria and 
Mongolia which could accommodate millions upon millions 
of ill-fed or starving Chinese farther south. If such fields 
were open to settlement and cultivation in America, there 
would be such a rush as there was a few years ago to the last 
frontier lands in Oklahoma. The American settlers would 
not be burdened in their flight by their Lares and Penates, 
as was Aeneas of old, who not only bore them with him but 
carried his father on his shoulder. The Chinese peasant says, 
however, in the face of like allurement: ‘‘Who would take 
care of the graves of my ancestors?”’ 

Our own civilization, one of whose Ten Commandments 
enjoins parental reverence, but one of whose chief concerns 
now is the want of respect by youth for age, and by the present 
for the past, must find something to praise in a people who 
are willing to make sacrifices even to the point of starvation 
in order to honor not only their parents but their remote 
forbears. Our scientists are beginning to be concerned about 
spaces for libraries and cemeteries, but it is am economic 
anxiety. It ought not to be necessary to destroy this sense 
of spiritual continuity in order to fight famine in China, 
but it must be taken into account in all the plans for con- 
trolling floods, fighting pestilence, increasing soil fertility, 
improving methods of cultivation for the fields and conser- 
vation for the forests, using modern agricultural implements, 
making fuller use of time, avoiding waste effort, developing 
means of transportation and providing for credits. All these 
things seem to wait upon a better political organization and 
control, but, as Mr. Mallory urges, amelioration may be 
achieved even without a unified empire. 

It is a shocking fact that with all the labor expended and 
virtues practiced, nearly a fourth of the people of the globe 
live in a land of famine—not of general famine at any one 
time nor of continuous famine in any one place, but of famine 
in one or another province or locality all the time. ‘There was 
a famine in the land”’ was a frequent phrase in ancient history. 


XIV COLINAS CAND ZO DSR ANLINE 


It is somewhat discreditable to present world agriculture 
with its surplusage in some regions that other regions 
should be chronically in that condition. Mr. Mallory makes 
constructive suggestions, which need not be anticipated here, 
but it is well to give the reader who pauses to read this 
prefatory note the advice that one who enters the rather dark 
passages reciting the causes of famine in China need not 
abandon hope for China—for at the end one comes out into 
the light of day again with this assurance from the guide: 


If history teaches us anything, she teaches that a race as numerous and as 
fundamentally sound as the Chinese, which has maintained its political and 
cultural solidarity for so many centuries, will not perish from the earth. 


The American Geographical Society, which is interested in 
the whole earth, makes this sympathetic scientific contribu- 
tion to the desired welfare of our antipodes, who are rich in 
natural resources and have almost unlimited human energy. 


JouHN H. FINLEY 


PREFACE 


The meager knowledge in Western countries of things 
Chinese makes it incumbent upon those who have had the 
privilege of intimate association with China’s problems to 
record their knowledge, or even their impressions, in some 
permanent form. The writer presents this book to discharge 
his obligation in this connection. It is, so far as he knows, 
the first to be published in English dealing exclusively with 
one of China’s major problems, namely, famine. 

It has been the writer’s purpose to set forth in these pages, 
as briefly and understandably as possible, why China has so 
many famines and what, in his judgment, can be done to 
prevent them. No effort has been made to give a history of 
past disasters, excepting for purposes of illustration, and the 
good and bad practices of former times are alluded to only 
in order to throw light on conditions as they are today. 

Some repetition will be discerned. This was unavoidable, 
for many factors are associated in the causes of famine; and 
its cure can come only through correlated improvements of 
a widely divergent nature. While treating these causes and 
cures individually, therefore, the writer may have traversed 
ground previously trodden, but only for the purpose of focus- 
ing attention on the relation of cause with cause, and cure 
with cure. 

The author wishes gratefully to acknowledge the assistance 
he has received from Mr. J. E. Baker, Advisor to the Chinese 
Government, Mr. Y. S. *Djang, Chief Secretary, Chinese 
Red Cross Society, Professor J. B. Tayler of Yenching 
University, and Mr. O. J. Todd, Chief Engineer, China 
International Famine Relief Commission, for criticisms and 
helpful suggestions in portions of the book where their expert 
knowledge of the particular points involved made _ their 
advice appropriate. He wishes especially to record his 
appreciation of the help of Mr. Carl W. Bishop, of the Smith- 


XV 


XVI CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


sonian Institution, and of Mr. H. B. Elliston, of the Chinese 
Government Bureau of Economic Information, whose inti- 
mate knowledge, the one on the cultural and the other on 
the economic side of Chinese life, has made their aid of 
inestimable value. 

Acknowledgment must also be made to the China Inter- 
national Famine Relief Commission for the photographic 
illustrations selected from its file and adding so much to the 
value of this volume. All those which are not otherwise 
credited were taken by Mr. O. J. Todd. 

Wiel eave 


Peking, China, April 6, 1926. 





= Fy a : nate. 


Fic. 2—A Chinese village turning out em masse to see the foreign visitors. 


PNERO DOG RLON 


Food is the most urgent problem of the Chinese. This 
fact is reflected even in the speech of the people. In China 
the polite salutation on meeting a friend is “‘Have you 
eaten?” instead of the customary inquiry as to one’s health or 
well-being usually employed in other tongues. This form of 
greeting is a creation of the rural community, and the impli- 
cation is that if the person so saluted has not eaten the 
inquirer will see that his needs are quickly met. Foreigners 
who study the language with a Chinese teacher find that 
almost the first words and phrases given to them have to do 
with food, eating, and money (with which to buy food). 
“The rich man has food to eat, the poor man has none,” 
forms the basis of one of the first lessons. Beggars are referred 
to in the colloquial idiom as ‘‘food wanters’’; and they all 
provide themselves with pails or bowls in which they can 
receive the refuse from the tables of the well-to-do. 

The food problem is an ancient one in China: from the 
earliest times famines have been an ever recurring scourge. 
A study recently completed by the Student Agricultural 
Society of the University of Nanking brought to light the 
surprising and significant fact that between the years 108 
B. C. and 1911 A.D. there were 1828 famines, or one nearly 
every year in some one of the provinces. Untold millions 
have died of starvation. In fact the normal death rate may 
be said to contain a constant famine factor. Depleted 
vitality following years of want also tends to increase the 
death rate. Chinese history is filled with the details of past 
disasters and not only recounts at great length the nature 
of the calamity and its causes but names the officials under 

I 


2 GH TNE SAIN D2 © Pare VN Te 


whom relief work was administered and describes the methods 
pursued in bringing succor to the unfortunate victims. 

The Emperor Yii, who lived four thousand years ago, 
achieved great renown and is still regarded by the Chinese 
people as a national sage, for the wisdom displayed in his 
flood prevention work on the Yellow River. Since his time 
officials have repeatedly endeavored to follow his example, 
and fame has been more readily achieved by devising methods 
to relieve and prevent famine emergencies than in almost 
any other way. 

The great drought that occurred in North China in 1920- 
1921, during which, according to the best obtainable in- 
formation, 500,000 of the natives perished, is still fresh in 
the minds of the public. Mr. Dwight W. Edwards, in his 
comprehensive report,' estimates that at the height of the 
distress nearly 20,000,000 people were destitute. In some 
of the worst affected districts not only was the entire 
reserve of food consumed but also all other vegetation. <A 
house-to-house canvas revealed the following bill of fare: 
k’ang, mixed with wheat blades, flour made of ground 
leaves, fuller’s earth, flower seed, poplar buds, corncobs, 
hung ching tsai (steamed balls of some wild herb), sawdust, 
thistles, leaf dust, poisonous tree bean, kaoliang husks, 
cotton seed, elm bark, bean cakes (very unpalatable), peanut 
hulls, sweet potato vines ground (considered a great delicacy), 
roots, stone ground up into flour to piece out the ground 
leaves. Some of the food was so unpalatable that the children 
starved, refusing to eat it. 

Everything of any intrinsic value was sold by the poorer 
people, even including the roof timbers; and interest rates 
rose until even 100 per cent was considered not unreasonable 
in some places. There was extensive migration of the 
people from the dry regions, in some localities whole villages 
moving out. The sale of women and children, particularly 
young girls, reached such proportions that a special committee 
was organized for the protection of children. Prices ranged 


‘The North China Famine 1920-1921, With Special Reference to the West Chihli 


Area: Being the Report of the Peking United International Famine Relief Committee, 
Peking, 1922. 


INTRODUCTION 3 


from $3.00 to $150.00, Chinese currency (one dollar in 
United States currency equals approximately two Chinese 
dollars), and thus the sacrifice of one or two of the younger 
members of the family served to provide the wherewithal 
to purchase food for the rest. Parents were not ready to 
give up their children but did so rather than see them starve. 

Mr. Edwards estimates that more than $37,000,000, 
Chinese currency, was made available to meet the needs 
of the sufferers. Of this more than half was administered 
under international auspices; and this included large sums 
from abroad, particularly America. At the height of their 
operations the international committees alone were feeding 
more than 7,700,000 individuals. 

A notable work was accomplished. But what of the 
future? Has a starving population today been saved simply 
to die during the next famine a few years hence unless further 
aid is forthcoming? Is there no means by which these great 
disasters can be prevented ? 

Well wishers of China who have studied her famine problem 
have brought forward many schemes for improving condi- 
tions. They reflect the particular interest with which their 
authors are identified, ranging all the way from the funda- 
mentalist missionary’s faith that if the Chinese masses will 
become Christians “the Lord will provide’ to the ma- 
chinery salesman’s idea that China’s only hope is the early 
adoption of industrialism. 

Conservancy engineers tell us that the most urgent need 
is the control of China’s rivers to prevent devastating floods, 
the carrying-out of irrigation, land-reclamation, and similar 
projects to increase the cultivable land. Economists propose 
the introduction of better banking methods which will 
lower the interest rates and make possible the application 
of the surplus capital in the cities to the rural sections of 
the country. Or, again, they advance the proposal to 
relieve the pressure of population in the thickly settled re- 
gions by colonization of the vast areas of Manchuria and 
Mongolia. Provision of better transportation facilities is 
also urged so that the abundant crops of a prosperous district 


4 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


may be quickly and cheaply moved to a section where flood 
or drought may have created a condition of want. 

The educator advocates the teaching of agriculture in 
the schools and colleges and the advanced training of for- 
esters. He traces China’s ills, particularly of the northern 
provinces of the country, to deforestation—a process which 
has been under way for centuries. 

Many of those who give their thought to the social aspects 
of the situation point to the phenomenally high birth rate 
and insist, quite justly in the author’s opinion, that no per- 
manent solution of the problem of famines in China is possible 
until the people are content to regulate the size of their 
families according to their resources. 

All agree that the present unusually bad conditions are 
in a measure traceable to the political disorganization of 
the country. However, there is no more appropriate time 
than the present to consider by what means better conditions 
can be brought about; and indeed there are many remedial 
measures that can be initiated even in these disordered days. 

The question is one of such magnitude that, if any ap- 
preciable progress is to be made, all of the plans mentioned 
above must be followed. But there are certain types of 
work that will yield results more quickly than others, and 
it is the author’s purpose not only to present plans but 
to examine them in some detail and endeavor to point out 
the relative importance of each. 





Fic. 2—In famine years locusts are caught to supplement the food supply. 


(Clabsdr AMS aE 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 


The struggle for existence in’ China is indescribably hard. 
The meager statistics available show a condition among 
the great mass of the people which westerners are at first 
inclined to doubt and which, when proved to their satisfac- 
tion to be true, they are never able to understand. One 
often hears statements about the ‘“‘margin of livelihood”’ 
in China, but facts show that there is no margin at all if 
the population be regarded as a whole. The bare food. 
requirements for a normal year are greater than the present 
production and importation of edibles, and this leads to the 
under-nourishment of a part of the people and the eating 
of unwholesome food substitutes by the poorer classes. 


TRACK TOR STATISTICS 


The lack of reliable statistics regarding conditions in 
tural China has made the study of famines and the adoption 
of methods of relief and prevention a difficult matter. With- 
out any standards of comparison it is even difficult to de- 
termine what constitutes a state of famine. Apart from these 
purely statistical difficulties, foreign investigators, even 
those long resident in China and conversant with the language, 
often bring back conflicting reports from the same district. 
A man of a sympathetic and impressionable nature will 
pronounce the whole countryside in the grip of the most 
abject want, while the inquirer with the more practical 
viewpoint reports normal conditions. 

5 


6 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


HO WS 120 


Yi) Area most subject to 
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A ei SHOWING 
aay Uy LOWLANDS and RIVER BASINS 
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Fic. 4—Map of China showing lowlands and river basins. Scale approximately 
1:23,000,000. Inset: The provinces of China most subject to serious famines, 
Chihli, Shantung, Shansi, Shensi, and Honan. Compare with Figure 10 showing 
the density of population. 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE i) 


Recognizing the need for more detailed and accurate in- 
formation the China International Famine Relief Com- 
mission in the summer of 1922 made a survey of rural con- 
ditions. It was carried out by students from nine universities 
who spent their summer vacation in the country collecting 
data on the basis of carefully prepared questionnaires and 
under the supervision of professors of economics of known 
standing. This was probably the first scientific attempt 
of any importance to secure dependable facts concerning 
the social and economic conditions under which the country 
people live; and some of the results of this inquiry will be 
utilized in these pages.’ 


THE Cost oF LIVING 


Various estimates have been made of the cost of living 
in interior China. On account of poor transportation this 
cost is greatly affected by the size of the last harvest in the 
particular district examined; and, since these estimates always 
refer to restricted areas, allowance must be made if the 
figures are to be applied to the country as a whole. 

Professor C. G. Dittmer after a detailed examination of 
the budgets of about 200 families near Peking reaches the 
conclusion that a family of five can live in comparative 
comfort, according to local standards, on an income of 
$100 a year, Chinese currency.’ This would provide sufficient 
simple food, a house that would at least afford shelter from 
the elements, two suits of clothing for each person, enough 
fuel for cooking, and a surplus of $5.00 for miscellaneous 
expenses. However, he goes on to say that the Chinese 
families examined by him all lived within their incomes, 
even though they received no more than $50.00 a year, and 
that those earning $70.00 a year were able to save money. 
The Manchu families included in the survey all showed a 
deficit if their income was less than $90.00. 


2C. B. Malone and J. B. Tayler: The Study of Chinese Rural Economy, China 
Internat]. Famine Relief Comm. Publ., Ser. B, No. 10, Peking, 1924. 

3C. G. Dittmer: An Estimate of the Chinese Standard of Living in China, Quart. 
Journ. of Economics, Vol. 33, 1918, pp. 107-128. 


LAND OF FAMINE 


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ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 9 


In Professor Dittmer’s analysis of family expenses, the 
cost of food ranged from 68 to 83 per cent, the regular diet 
being two meals a day of corn bread and salt turnips. Rent 
averaged 5 to 15 per cent, the best house costing but $15.00 
a year. Fuel and light required on the average 6 to 7 per 
cent of the yearly expenditure, and clothing 3.4 to 8.5 per 
cent. Miscellaneous expenditures (including books, recrea- 
tion, savings, etc.) ranged from 1.3 to 6.6 per cent, and for 
the families with the largest incomes the average annual 
amount was only $8.90. This last item is a real measure of 
the family’s standard of living. In the United States even 
the poorer classes have at least 20 per cent of their income 
remaining after the bare necessities of life are assured— 
more than three times the proportion enjoyed by the most 
fortunate Chinese families included in this survey. 

The figures arrived at by Professor J. B. Tayler are some- 
what higher: he gives the total annual income requirement 
for a family of five roughly as $150.00.4. The higher estimate 
may be due in part to the fact that the investigation on which 
he bases his opinion was made several years after that of 
Professor Dittmer, and living costs had risen considerably 
in the meantime. It should be pointed out that his estimates 
are based on the requirements for the adequate sustenance 
of a poor family rather than on an average of what is actually 
spent by them. The figures obtained from rural investiga- 
tion have shown that a large proportion of the incomes are 
below the poverty line; and to give the actual expenditure 
on which a family is known to have survived does not neces- 
sarily mean that its members have received sufficient food 
or clothing to keep them in health. 

Professor Tayler’s appraisal of the food requirements is 
founded on a model diet for a poor Chinese farming population 
prepared by Dr. G. Douglas Gray of the British Legation, 
Peking, and Professor Bernard E. Read of the Peking Union 
Medical College. According to this diet 104 ounces of grain 
(32 oz. wheat, 24 oz. millet, and 48 oz. kaoliang), 15 ounces 
of vegetables, 10 ounces of oil, and in winter 16 ounces of 


4 China Internatl. Famine Relies Comm. Publ., Ser. B, No. ro. 


‘ 


IO CHINA SCAN DOR TAMING: 


cabbage are needed daily for a family of five. This diet is 
for a northern family since no rice is included. It contains 
no luxuries: there is no meat nor fish nor eggs. It is only 
about one-third of the value of the diet required in England 
to yield an equal protein content and an equal number of 
calories, the English diet containing a large proportion of 
animal products. Professor Tayler puts the clothing re- 
quirement at $20.00 a year, housing at $5.00, light at $5.00, 
and allows $7.00 for miscellaneous expenses. The $113.00 
left from the budget of $150.00 is not enough to purchase 
the food requisite for the diet given above but, allowing 
for the period of inaction during the winter when the people 
are able to reduce their food allowance, is sufficient to main- 
tain life. The cost of living in eastern and southern China is 
higher than in the north, because rice is more expensive 
than the northern grains; but the greater clothing and fuel 
needs in the north tend to reduce the difference. 

Taking the more liberal allowance of $150.00 estimated 
by Professor Tayler as the poverty line, let us examine the 
China International Famine Relief Commission’s survey, 
which covered 240 villages in Chihli, Kiangsu, Shantung, 
Anhwei, and Chekiang, with a total of 7097 families, or 
37,191 individuals. We find that more than half the popula- 
tion of the eastern villages and more than four-fifths of 
that of the northern villages had an income below the poverty 
line. No less than 17.6 per cent of the families of the eastern 
villages and 62.2 per cent of those of the northern villages 
had incomes of less than $50.00. This represents not only 
the actual cash income but also the value of crops raised and 
earnings from village industry. Professor Tayler says: 


The pressure of population is evidently a grim reality, and a con- 
siderable percentage of the families seem to go to pieces under this pressure. 
In the case of Chihli the figures are almost unbelievable. It is not con- 
tended that they are exact. In a certain number of cases the income 
given may have been very far from the truth, in many cases it may have 
been appreciably below, perhaps as much as twenty or even thirty per 
cent; but when allowance has been made for the utmost that can be 
conceded in this direction, the results still have a comparative value and 
they are certainly sufficiently startling. 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE II 


It is interesting to note, for the sake of comparison, that 
the Peking police estimate of the income necessary for 
independence, as given in ‘‘Peking: A Social Survey’’ is 
$66.00 a year for a family of two and $93.00 a year for a 





FIG. 7 


Fic. 6—The struggle for existence in China is indescribably hard. Victims 
of a famine. 
Fic. 7—Not a famine victim, but a professional beggar. 


family of four.’ This would nearly coincide with Professor 
Dittmer’s calculation. 

Somewhat similar surveys have been made _ recently 
(1925) by the Chinese Government Bureau of Economic 
Information, and the results arrived at are not sufficiently 
different to alter these conclusions. For instance, an in- 
vestigation of the current wages in Shansi, one of the most 


5S. D. Gamble and J. S. Burgess: Peking: A Social Survey, New York, 1921, 
p. 268. 


12 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


prosperous and well governed provinces today, shows that 
the rate varies from $2.00 to $7.00 a month, including board, 
according to the line of work. The average for all trades 
is $4.50 a month, or $54.00 a year, Chinese currency. Farm 
hands are generally engaged by the year, their remuneration 
with board and lodging being $15.00 to $20.00 annually. 
The Bureau states that wages have increased from 100 to 
200 per cent during the past decade. 

Another investigation, the results of which were published 
by the same Bureau,’ was conducted by Dr. Ta Chen, 
professor of sociology of Tsing Hua College, Peking. An 
examination was made of two villages, Chenfu, which is 
six miles from Peking and which may be considered as 
representing conditions in the north, and Huichow, Anhwei, 
in the rice-growing belt of central China. The following 
estimate of the cost of living was arrived at: 





Chenfu Huichow 
Food $84.00 $106.60 
Clothing . bake ly ec O.. Saat ee en eee 40.00 40.00 
RENTS eG atideee peor nat eer Ae sO ee 6.00 5.50 
Dliscellancousitteleicn |) ease eee eee 5.00 5.00 
Lotabexpenses Qtr am aieun we acer en ic) ea) ie eee Te TCG) $157.10 
Ocenia (Ona Weact eosin een eee ee eer 88.80 
Deficits air teary erty geile Gian eee tn ae $41.88 $68.30 


It will be seen that the cost of living is greater in the south, 
a result which bears out the Famine Commission figures. 
Also it appears that the people in neither village had sufficient 
income to meet the requirements of this standard of living, 
many of them being entirely dependent on occupational 
earnings. The average size of the families was 4.9 in Chenfu, 
and 4.4 in Huichow. These figures are slightly smaller than 
the findings of the Famine Commission, but they cover only 
147 families, while the latter survey included 7097. 


° Chinese Econ. Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 9, Chinese Govt. Bur. of Econ. Information, 
Peking. 
191 DIG aa Olos 2. NO. 5 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 13 


Foop REQUIREMENTS Not MET 


As has been said above, normal annual food requirements 
are greater than the entire domestic production plus the 
imports. In accordance with the diet which has been ac- 
cepted as necessary to preserve health, the grain needed for 
a family of five is 2372 pounds a year. Mr. D. K. Lieu of 
the Chinese Government Bureau of Economic Information 
estimates that the average yield of wheat, the staple food in 
the northern provinces, is about 1200 pounds an acre which, 
after deducting loss in husking and milling, would leave 500 
pounds of flour.2 It would, therefore, take 4.7 acres to 
provide for a family of five. But 33 per cent of the holdings 
are less than one acre, and 55 per cent are one and one-half 
acres or less, while the number of large farms is very small 
indeed. The average size of the families who have as much 
as one and one-half acres is 5.7, and the number in the families 
increases with the size of the holdings. The same land in 
good years is capable of producing, besides the winter wheat, a 
crop of beans or millet which is harvested in the fall; but 
even assuming two crops a year which, because of frequent 
floods and droughts, is possible only a part of the time, it 
will be seen that the yield does not meet the needs. 

The staple food in central and southern China is rice. 
Probably two-thirds of the entire population of China make 
it their chief diet. Mr. Lieu estimates the average yield of 
clean rice at 2150 pounds an acre in the richest rice-growing 
region. The average yield for all rice-growing provinces is 
probably about 1400 pounds an acre. At this rate it would 
take 1.7 acres to provide the 2372 pounds necessary for 
an average family. But, as has been said, 55 per cent of the 
families have holdings of less than an acre and a half. During 
the last three years for which statistics of the Maritime 
Customs are available the excess of imports of rice over 
exports averages about 17,000,000 piculs, or 2,260,000,000 
pounds, a year. If we place the number of rice eaters at 
300,000,000, this quantity divided among them would mean 


8D. K. Lieu: Food Conservation in China, Mid-Pacific Mag., Honolulu, Vol. 
29, 1925, Dp. 511-519. 


14 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


7.5 pounds apiece. In addition, much of the land is capable 
of producing two crops, which helps to bring the yield up 
to requirements. The picture, however, is blacker when it 
is borne in mind that, although there is an embargo on the 
export of rice and of some other cereals, much smuggling 
| is practiced and the embargo 
is often raised by the military 
dictators in timesof provincial 
warfare in return for large 
contributions from interested 
merchants to the war chests. 
Chinese rice is always in de- 
mand and brings a good price 
in Japan; and no doubt much 
rice finds its way thither with- 
out being recorded by the 
Customs authorities. 

It will be recognized that 
these figures are quite general 
in nature and most unsatis- 
factory to the exact. As was 
remarked at the beginning of 
this chapter adequate statis- 
ee : tics are lacking. One must 

S Ls 2a abe talk in terms of specific locali- 
Fic. 8—Terraced fields in the hills of ties, and here the figures are 
Sperhwant eloquent enough. Personal 

experience would corroborate 
the truth of the observations derived herefrom over a much 
wider area and in much more touching terms of human 
misery. 

It is this lack of any margin of livelihood that is one of 
the fundamental causes of famine. It will be readily seen 
that the destruction or failure of even one crop results in 
severe distress and, in many cases, in actual famine. Anal- 
ogous conditions in western countries result only in a period 
of hard times, for the population has an economic reserve 
on which to call. 





ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 15 


OVERCROWDING 


The density of population in China as a whole is only 
about 238 to the square mile.® This figure, however, does 
not show the conditions of the great mass of the people. 
Half of the total population of China occupies but a quarter 
of the total area of the coun- 
try. The Famine Commission 
investigations covering 65 vil- 
lages in the rice-growing 
provinces of Chekiang and 
Kiangsu have shown that the 
number of inhabitants to the 
square mile varies from 980 in 
some village districts to 6880 
in others. In Shantung fig- 
ures range from 1800 to 3000, 
and in the northern wheat- 
producing province of Chihli 
from 550 to 2010. In the most 
densely peopled area in India, 
in parts of Bengal, there are 
1162 people to the square mile 
of cultivated land, while in 
Oudh there are 816, in Agra 
761, and in Madras only 615. 
Figures for Japan include also 
the cities; and the total given 
for the most densely peopled 
area is 2349 to the square mile. Japan does not produce 
sufficient food to support its people. 

It is not difficult to prove that the population saturation 
point has been reached on the coastal plains of China. In 
the early part of the nineteenth century Malthus developed 
his famous theory of population—that there is a tendency 
for the human race constantly to increase and to press upon 
subsistence. Subsistence, he said, only increases in arith- 
metical ratio, while population bounds forward in geometrical 







ne oe 
7 I aan. A lt Smo a onemtaie 
seitcicoipersicamnoaccniciiii 
Gin iia ner ti 





bi cages TP 


Fic. 9—One sees an occasional wood 
lot in southern Shensi. 


® The question of Chinese population estimates is discussed in Chapter IV. 


16 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 








* EACH DOT EQUALS 25000 PERSONS 





Fic. 1o—The density of population in China. Scale approximately I :27,000,000. 
This and the succeeding maps, Figures 11-14 showing some typical distributions 
by provinces, are reproduced by permission from the China Continuation Com- 
mittee’s survey, “‘The Christian Occupation of China,’”’ Shanghai, 1922. 


ratio. But he also pointed out that the unequal race was 
counteracted in either one of two ways, which he called 
positive and preventive checks. The positive checks work to 
increase the death rate; the preventive checks to decrease 
the birth rate. 

Before the time of Malthus, Siissmilch, the first writer 
on vital statistics, as early as 1750 named as the four great 


BCONOMIC CAUSES:OR FAMINE 17 


natural checks to the increase of mankind: pestilence 
“which often carried off half the population, not only of 
cities but of whole provinces’’; war, ‘‘a real monster, a dis- 
graceful blot on reason and humanity, and especially on 
Christianity’’; famine; earthquakes and floods. 
























< 60,000 Cage 
HONAN KIANGSU ee 100,000 0 1020 40 60MILES 
250, 
: : On la 





Fic. 11—Populaticn distribution in Shantung. The western prov- 
ince, forming part of the great northern plain, is one of the very 
densely peopled regions of China, Scale approximately 1:7,500,000. 


In China the birth rate is abnormally high as is also the 
death rate, facts which bear out Malthus’ theory that the 
population is pressing on subsistence and reducing the 
standard of life. The positive check is operating, for the 
population tends to increase faster than the means of support 
justify and is held in check only by famines, disease, and war. 
The inhabitants are ill fed, insufficiently clothed, and oft- 
times without proper shelter. 

This overcrowding on the land makes impossible the 
collection of any reserve of foodstuffs. A good crop does 
not result in a surplus of grain but merely provides the 
people for a short time with a better diet, since the farmer is 
able to eat and in fact, on the average, should eat more than 
he can normally produce. Thus when a poor year occurs 


18 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


the whole countryside finds itself without food and ofttimes 
without the wherewithal to procure it from outside sources. 


SuRPLUS LABOR 


There are several reasons for this overcrowding on the 
land, the most important being traceable to the traditional 
Chinese family system, 
which tends to hold the 
various branches togeth- 
er no matter how greatly 
it increases in numbers. 
The sons are expected to 
live at home with their 
parents and grandpar- 
ents, if there are any, and 
when they marry their 
wives become full-fledged 
members of the family 
group. What little land 
there is must support the 
ever increasing numbers 
until a point is reached 
where no more can pos- 
sibly subsist on the prod- 
uce. Frequent famines 
< 10!a09 tend to readjust this con- 
030000 ition eal Geet Lemismtie 


FG. 12—Population distribution in Shansi, beginning of a movement 
a province of the loess plateau. The greatest 
density is in the basins, especially in the of the young men _ to 
Fen Ho valley. urban centers where they 


obtain employment as 
servants, porters, carriers, or factory hands.  Industrializa- 
tion of the country, however, has not progressed so far as to 
effect any appreciable change in the situation except perhaps 
in restricted areas near the ports. The places of those who 
leave are soon filled, and those who go regard themselves as 
only temporarily absent and do not completely break away 























q 





ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 19 


from home. In case 
of a loss of em- 
ployment, they drift 
back to increase the 
burden on the land. 
There isa tremen- 
dous labor surplus. 
With only an acre 
and a half to an av- 
erage family of 5.7 
members hundreds 
of labor days per 
family are wasted in 
the course of a year. 
Village industries 
tend to help matters 
somewhat; but poor 
transportation, lack 
of capital, and lack 
of initiative have 
prevented their de- 
velopment to any 
substantial extent. 
There is an an- 
nual movement of 
labor from Shan- 
tung which reflects 
to amarked degree 
the love of home 
and unwillingness to 
leave it for new 
fields. Every year 
more than thirty 
thousand men mi- 
grate from Shan- 
tung to Manchuria. 
They leave early in 
the spring and travel 





e 
e 
e 
e@ 
@ 
& 750,000 


1,000,000+ 





CHEKIANG 






40 





60 MILES 


he 





Fic. 14 


Fic. 13—Population distribution in Kiangsu. The 
southern third of the province, part of the Yangtze 
delta, has an extremely high population density. 

Fic. 14—Population distribution in Fukien. The 
population of southern China is concentrated espe- 
cially on the coasts. 


20 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


more than 500 miles to the rich lands of the north where 
they work during the summer; but in the autumn they all re- 
turn to their homesin Shantung. In the days before the con- 
struction of the Peking-Mukden Railway, they made this 
trip on foot taking nearly a month on the road each way. 
It is almost unbelievable that such a practice continues 
year after year when good Manchurian farm lands are 
available and can be bought on easy terms and for a phe- 
nomenally low price from the railway authorities which are 
making an effort to settle this region. It cannot be said 
that the people do not realize the benefits, for they see them 
with their own eyes and share in them for a short time every 
summer; but they are unwilling to change their homes and 
their mode of life. 

It may be said that there has been a great migration of 
Chinese in the past, and this subject will be discussed in future 
chapters; but the point made here is that for the most part 
the movement of population at present is rather the em1- 
eration of surplus labor than any large transplantation of 
family groups to new localities. 

The facility with which large armies can be recruited by 
the various military leaders without greatly affecting the 
districts from which they are taken is a striking evidence 
of the surplus of able-bodied men. They are temporarily 
withdrawn from the land, but the conditions are not ap- 
preciably affected thereby. The crops are as well tended 
as before; the economic waste involved lies in other directions. 


[EXGKROPAGREDITS 


In case of a bad crop failure in most western countries, 
it would be unusual if any large proportion of the people 
were reduced to a state of famine. But in China the position 
is just the reverse. 

The plight of the Chinese farmer is due not alone to 
poverty but to an even greater extent to the impossibility 
of borrowing sufficient funds to tide over to the next harvest. 
It is true that official loan regulations are often issued in 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 21 


times of famine. In 1920-1921 a mandate was promulgated 
providing that the maximum interest rate should be three 
per cent monthly. The fact is, however, that this edict 
was not heeded, for cases are known where much higher 
rates, even as high as eight or nine per cent monthly, were 
charged. As a matter of fact, even the government itself, 
according to the Bureau of Economic Information, pays 
as high as 25 per cent interest for short-term loans. 

Banks in China are comparatively few in number and 
are located, naturally, in the larger towns and cities. It is, 
therefore, difficult for the farmers to borrow from regular 
banking institutions. Sometimes grain dealers in the market 
towns carry on a loan business. They are usually more 
accessible to the country people than are the banks, they 
are better informed as to the credit of the borrower, and 
they can make collections more easily. Thus the borrower 
can obtain more favorable terms. Dearth of capital results 
in a phenomenally high interest rate. In normal years and 
with good security the rural bankers require from 20 to 36 
per cent annually. In famine years the rate is much higher, 
often being more than 100 per cent. Even on such terms 
and with real property to hypothecate, it is often impossible 
for the farmers to contract a loan. The poor peasant has 
then to seek a pawnbroker or a money lender. If he is 
successful in his search he learns that the interest rates are 
higher still than with the banks and that he can borrow only 
up to one-half of the value of the real property he gives as 
security. 

It is probably more usual for possessions to be sold out- 
right in case of financial distress; but when a whole district 
is threatened with famine, it is impossible to find buyers, 
and then the poorest must literally sit down and starve. 

Those who do not own land and who have only their small 
possessions to offer for security must resort to the pawnshop, 
which is a factor in China’s economic life of far more impor- 
tance than in the West. Here the loan is quickly made, and 
no questions are asked. But the rate of interest is high, and 
the term is short, generally ranging from four months to 


22 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


one year; and if the unfortunate man is unable to pay the 
loan when due he loses his property, although the loan may 
be but a fraction of the value of the security. 


THE Money LENDER 


To the very poor, who have no real property to pledge, 
there is left only the loan shark. If the borrowers have work 
or a reasonable prospect of regular income they can get an 
advance. The sums involved in such cases are usually small. 
The loan is generally made in coppers, and sometimes the 
repayment is called for in silver—a device often used to 
bewilder the ignorant and obscure the rate of interest. In 
the agreement no mention is made of the amount of the 
loan, the borrower agreeing to pay back a certain sum daily 
for a fixed number of days. Investigations recently made 
in Peking have shown that a rate as high as 40 per cent a 
month has been exacted. 

But it must not be inferred that the money lender is 
totally bad. Times occur when only the help which he may 
be willing to extend will save a family from starvation. 
When it is considered that he receives no security for his 
advance and that installments must be collected at frequent 
intervals—an element of considerable expense to the lender— 
it appears that the rate exacted is, in many instances, not 
exorbitant. Although Great Britain has probably examined 
the possibilities of preventing abuses of usury as thoroughly 
as any other modernstate, and although Parliament since the 
time of the Plantagenets has been passing legislation on the 
subject, the fact that bills have been presented in both 
Houses during the past year would indicate that no satis- 
factory remedy has yet been found. It is not possible to 
prohibit the practice of lending money by making it a 
criminal offense, for there is little distinction between legiti- 
mate banking and illegitimate money lending. However great 
the abuses connected with this business may be, and however 
desirable it may be to society that they should be abolished, 
there often arise urgent demands which can be met only by 
the money lender. 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 23 





FIG. 15 









Bicet6 


Fic. 17 
Fic. 15—A Shantung village flooded by the Yellow River in 1925. 


Fic. 16—The Yellow River flooded many hundreds of square miles of good 


farm land in 1925. 
Fic. 17—Salvaging the crops from flooded fields in Shantung, 1925. 


24 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Loan ASSOCIATIONS 


With a wider knowledge of methods employed in other 
countries there has developed of late years an extension of 
money lending by means of Loan Associations. These are 
formed by the sale of shares of definite denomination bear- 
ing a specified rate of interest, usually 30 per cent per annum. 
The associations are usually organized for three years. 
They elect officers who supervise the transactions of the 
society. The officers receive no salary but are accorded 
one per cent commission on every transaction and a bonus 
on net earnings. 

All loans granted must be guaranteed by a firm or indi- 
vidual of satisfactory financial standing. The interest rate 
fluctuates greatly, the loan agreement usually requiring the 
repayment of a sum 20 per cent greater than the face value 
of the loan. The method of amortization is by daily pay- 
ments, and the term varies from four months to one year. 
If repayment must be completed in four months, interest 
is at the rate of 120 per cent per annum; while if the term 
is one year the rate is only 40 per cent. In addition to this 
two per cent of the face value of the loan is deducted for 
expenses of the association, and this increases the interest 
rate. 

While banking facilities are not equal to those in other 
countries, there is one important factor peculiar to China 
which operates as a check upon borrowing. This is the 
family system requiring the pooling of resources. In this 
way the more prosperous members or branches of the family 
provide for the poorer relatives against temporary periods 
of unemployment, sickness, or loss of crops. This system 
applies not only to the immediate members of a family but 
also to its more distant branches. Thus a reserve is created 
which often makes outside help unnecessary. 


ANTIQUATED AGRICULTURAL METHODS 


The recurrence of famines in China and the severity of 
these disasters depend upon the amount of foodstuffs available 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 25 


to the population at any given time. Obviously antiquated 
methods of farming that tend to restrict production have 
an important bearing on this problem. 

The great plains of China are intensively farmed. Owing 
to abundant labor and small individual holdings production 
is greater than for any similar area in the United States or 
other countries where labor is scarce and machine methods 
are employed. Chinese farmers through centuries of ex- 
perience have developed methods of their own, and an 
appreciation of their tremendous accomplishments in the 
face of great odds may well precede any criticism. In the 
first place, simply because Chinese methods are old it should 
not be assumed that they are necessarily bad or that they 
fail to meet conditions of life in the Orient; rather the op- 
posite. In fact, as Dr. F. H. King has well shown in his 
classic ‘‘Farmers of Forty Centuries,’’!® methods which 
have endured and been perfected through so long a time 
must have unusual merit. It has been clearly demonstrated 
that an exchange of ideas between China and other countries 
would bring great benefit to both. The belief that there is 
much to learn from China has prompted the United States 
Department of Agriculture to send experts there to gather 
information; but studies that have been made by uni- 
versities in China and by Chinese students abroad have 
proved beyond doubt that there are many modern methods 
which might be adopted that would increase production 
in China. 


MAINTENANCE OF SOIL FERTILITY 


The greatest achievement of the Chinese farmer has been 
the maintenance of the fertility of the soil for four thousand 
years under a constant burden of intensive production. When 
it is considered that strong, virgin farm lands in America 
have been exhausted in three or four generations and that 
too without the tremendous pressure of population on sub- 
sistence prevailing in China, the magnitude of this accom- 
plishment can be more heartily appreciated. The secret 


10 . ; See 
F. H. King: Farmers of Forty Centuries, 1911; new edit. in press. 


26 CHINAS AND SO Fan ivi LN 


of this success is largely in the Chinese method of fertilization, 
achieved entirely without the aid of chemical fertilizers. 
The wastes of the human body and the wastes of fuel are, 
after careful preparation taking several months, put back 
in the soil as manure. 





Fic. 18—Primitive methods in China: a native rice huller. 


Another great factor that has helped to keep the farm lands 
fertile has been their wide irrigation, particularly in central 
and southern China. This has not only brought water 
to the crops but has constantly replenished the fields with 
new exceptionally fertile soil precipitated from the flood 
waters of the many rivers. 

Prevention of soil erosion of the cultivable lands has also 
been widely practiced, at tremendous expense in human 
labor but with results that have justified the outlay. Fields 
are so constructed as not only to avoid erosion but to catch 
the maximum amount of soluble and suspended matter in 
the run-off. Hillside fields have been terraced and carefully 
graded and bounded by raised rims which retain the run-off 
until suspended matter has settled. 

The crops selected as staple are inherently adapted to 
the climate and soil of China. In central and southern China, 
where rain is abundant, the chief crop is rice. This crop 


ECGONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 27, 


_ 


permits the farmer to utilize as nearly as possible the total 
benefit from the heavy precipitation, as well as the run-off 
from adjacent uncultivated mountainous country. It is 
also a cereal that will stand intense fertilization. In the 
north, where rain is less and not so dependable, the drought- 





Fic. 19—The native plow does not cut a deep furrow. 


resisting millets are cultivated as well as wheat and kaoliang. 
Millet matures quickly, thrives in a hot climate, and grows 
vigorously in heavy rains. The planting of millet and 
wheat in hills or drills, instead of broadcasting it as in Amer- 
ica, permits intertillage and tends to conserve the moisture 
of the soil. 


INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 


The practice of working over organic matter with soil 
or subsoil before it is applied to the fields, although requiring 
ereat labor, serves to lengthen the growing season and makes 
multiple cropping possible. Sometimes as many as three 
crops are grown simultaneously in one field, all being in 
different stages of development, one nearing maturity while 
another is just coming up. In this way the maximum 
efficiency of the soil is obtained. 


28 GHINA: CAN DFOR FAMINE 


Rice is started in hills and later transplanted spear by 
spear. This requires much labor, but enough plants are 
started on one acre to cover ten acres when transplanted; 
and while the rice is getting started on one acre the other 
nine acres are used for other crops which are harvested before 
the transplanting season. 

These are some of the easily discernible reasons why 
China has been able to produce so much more abundantly 
than western countries and to sustain a population of more 
than four hundred million. But the splendid achievements 
of the past could: have been improved upon in some ways, 
and these improvements would perhaps have helped to create 
a surplus of wealth which would make famines less likely. 
Some of the possibilities will be considered in Chapter V. 


DEPLETION OF FORESTS 


The barren eroded hills of China and the vast expanse of 
plain where the monotony of the scenery is broken only 
by occasional clumps of trees used for shade in the villages 
or maintained to mark the graves of the departed tell a 
heartbreaking story of the improvidence of man. The 
questions of the effect of the denuding of China’s forests 
on erosion, the silting up of rivers, the regulation of rainfall, 
and other related topics will be discussed in Chapter II; but 
the economic effect of denudation may be briefly noted here. 

Wood is one of the important material requirements of 
the modern state. It is absolutely essential to industry. 
China now finds herself on the threshold of industrial ex- 
pansion; but she is devoid of forests and forest products in 
the very regions where the greatest development should 
and will take place. In Manchuria alone is there timber 
in any quantity. Even there the supply is in no way adequate 
to meet the demand, and transportation is so difficult that 
Oregon pine, imported from America, is used in preference 
to the native product. 

Having lived so many centuries without forests the country 
people have probably arrived at a total lack of appreciation 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE 29 


of their benefits. Those who do understand the value of 
trees and have undertaken to plant them have for the most 
part been disappointed. Trees have been carried away by 
neighboring farmers or appropriated by the soldiers for fuel; 
or financial reverses on the part of the owner have necessitated 
their sacrifice before they attained a size which would give 
the best economic return. 


Poor COMMUNICATIONS 


The worst famine that has occurred in China within the 
memory of the present inhabitants is the great drought famine 
of 1876-1879. During these three years it was reported that 
practically no rain fell in the provinces of Shensi, Shanst, 
Chihli, Honan, and a part of Shantung, and reports of the 
Famine Relief Committees organized to bring help to the 
unfortunate victims state that from nine to thirteen millions 
of human beings perished from hunger, disease, or violence. 

Although the immediate cause of this famine was the 
protracted drought, the reason for the tremendous death 
rate must be ascribed to lack of communications. In the 
first place, it took months for the news of the distress in 
the interior to reach the capital and ports. People were 
actually dying in great numbers over a wide area before 
any concerted action was taken to bring aid from the outside; 
and a disaster of such widespread proportions—the district 
affected covered about 300,000 square miles—soon exhausted 
the surplus of grain in the stricken provinces. Sliiieneealtey 
conditions became known, the task of transporting the 
needed quantity of grain over a distance of several hundred 
miles without railways or improved roads presented a 
problem that could not be solved. The Ghairman: of the 
Foreign Relief Committee in Tientsin in his report said: 

In November, 1877, the aspect of affairs was simply terrible. The 
autumn crops over the whole of Shansi and the greater part of Chihli, 
Honan, and Shensi had failed. . . . Tientsin was inundated with 
supplies from every available port. The Bund was piled mountain high 


with grain, the Government storehouses were full, all the boats were 
impressed for the conveyance of supplies towards Shansi and the Hochien 


30 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


districts of Chihli. Carts and wagons were all taken up and the cumber- 
some machinery of the Chinese Government was strained to the utmost 
to meet the enormous peril which stared it in the face. During the winter 
and spring of 1877-78, the most frightful disorder reigned supreme along 
the route to Shansi. Hwailu-hsien, the starting point was filled with 
officials and traders all intent on getting their convoys over the pass. 
Fugitives, beggars, and thieves absolutely swarmed. The officials were 
powerless to create any sort of order among the mountains. The track 
was completely worn out, and until a new one was made a dead block 
ensued. Camels, oxen, mules, and donkeys were hurried along in the 
wildest confusion, and so many perished or were killed by the desperate 
people in the hills, for the sake of their flesh, that the transit could only 
be carried on by the banded vigilance of the interested owners of grain, 
assisted by the train bands, or militia, which had been hastily got together, 
some of whom were armed with breech-loaders. . . . Night traveling 
was out of the question. The way was marked by the carcasses or skeletons 
of men and beasts, and the wolves, dogs, and foxes soon put an end to the 
sufferings of any wretch who lay down to recover from or die of his sick- 
ness in those terrible defiles. . . . Broken carts, scattered grain bags, 
dying men and animals so frequently stopped the way, that it was often 
necessary to prevent for days together the entry of convoys on the one 
side, in order to let the trains from the other come over. No idea of em- 
ploying the starving people in making a new, or improving the old road 
ever presented itself to the authorities; and passengers, thankful for their 
escape from the dangers of the journey, were lost in wonder that the 
enormous traffic was possible. 


In 1920-1921 almost analogous climatic conditions ob- 
tained throughout the same territory so badly hit forty-four 
years before. In the five northern provinces there was no 
rain for a year prior to the fall crop of 1920; but more rapid 
communications enabled the disaster to be anticipated, and 
as early as September, 1920, plans were being laid both by 
the Government and by philanthropic agencies to meet 
the distress. 

During the interval of forty-four years since the previous 
ereat famine, something like 6000 miles of railways had been 
constructed in China. It will be seen from the accompanying 
map that these lines crossed or penetrated all the affected 
provinces except Shensi. It was this fact more than any 
other which made the immense relief operations possible 
and successful and which kept down the number of deaths 
to less than half a million. 


ECONOMIC CAUSES*OH FANINE 3 






= se : wit os ME. 


Fic. 20 








PiG. 21 





ME ak 
HiGee2 


Fic. 20—-The water buffalo of Central China makes a good draft animal. 
Fic. 21—A native wheelbarrow in Hupeh. 
Fic. 22——A Chinese cart. The narrow tires of these vehicles soon ruin the 


roads. 


B2 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


But the railways, while they were a tremendous help, 
were not adequate to meet the situation entirely. Man- 
churia had a good crop, and the stations along the Peking- 
Mukden Railway were filled with cereals awaiting shipment 
while people were starving only a few hundred miles away. 
More is necessary than the 
provision of trunk railway 
lines. Foodstuffs must be 
transported from the railhead 
to interior points. Before 
1A. the 1920 famine practically 
A oe nothing had been done in 
[N\A China toward building roads 

age suitable for motor truck or 
even for heavy cart traffic. 
The American Red Cross uti- 
lized its famine relief funds in 
Shantung and Shansi proy- 
inces in the payment of able- 
bodied famine victims on road 
work, and nearly 850 miles of 
highways were constructed in 
this way. Since 1920 several 
times as much mileage has 
: | been built by the China Inter- 
me 23—The ae hauls in Cant national Famine Relief Com- 
are made by water. mission. 





INEFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION METHODS 


Only in the northern provinces are horse or mule-drawn 
vehicles widely used for transport. Over the greater part 
of the country the still more antique method of using animal 
or human carriers is followed. By far the greater portion 
of freight is moved by human labor; in some provinces 
wheelbarrows are used, in others no vehicle of any sort. 
This is the most inefficient mode that could be found, but 
the tremendous labor surplus has kept the practice alive. 

It is interesting to note the limit to which this method of 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE oe 


transportation can be effective in bringing relief to a famine- 
stricken area. Mr. J. E. Baker, Adviser on Accounts and 
Statistics to the Chinese Ministry of Communications and a 
recognized authority on transportation matters in China, says: 


A strong man can carry 100 catties (133 lbs.) on his back about 50 li (17 
miles, or 26 kilometers) ina day. Av- 
eraging the effect of sickness, accidents, 
rough roads, and other disadvanta- 
geous circumstances, the average man’s 
accomplishment would be considerably 
less than this. Probably about 17 
kilometers would be nearer the average 
performance of the average man. One 
hundred catties is about one-seven- 
teenth of a long ton. Hence, the aver- 
age day’s work for the average man is 
about one ton-kilometer per day. Itis 
well known, of course, that for a few 
days under sufficient inducement a man 
can do much more than this. Butthe 
work of armies on the march proves 
that this figure is about correct. 

Now a man carrying 100 catties on 
his back 17 kilometers during a day 
would need to eat about two catties of 
good, nourishing food. If the race of 
men is going to continue, he will also 
have to bring up afamily. The aver- 
age family consists of five members. 
They will have to eat. Suppose that Fic. 24—A strong man can carry 
the children and women folk each eat 100 catties (133 Ibs.) on his back. 
only one catty a day. That makes 
four more catties that will have to be supplied for this carrier. His family 
will need some clothes, a little salt, and a few other bare necessities. Sup- 
pose the equivalent of one and a half catties be required for these other 
necessities. Then seven and a half catties will be consumed by the carrier 
and his family. A carrier taking grain to market, with his family, would 
consume the entire load in 13 days—six and a half days to market and as 
many days for the return. At 17 kilometers a day, the market could 
not be more than 111 kilometers distant, say 225 li (or 75 miles).™ 





In other words, the carrier and his dependents would 


1 J. E. Baker: The Economic Value of Railroad Transportation, China Weekly 
Rev., Shanghai, Vol. 32, 1925. 


34. CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


consume the entire load in the time that it would take him 
to penetrate 75 miles into the famine area, leave his burden, 
and return home—supposing that he lived outside of the 
famine belt and were unable to obtain a load for the return 
trip. If there were freight to be moved back, this distance 
could be correspondingly increased. If the transportation 
were done by the famine sufferers themselves who reside 
within the distressed region no better results could be ex- 
pected, since for every able-bodied man who could be secured 
as a carrier there would be on the average four dependents, 
women, children, and aged. Relief cannot be brought, 
therefore, to a district beyond fifty to one hundred miles 
from the source of supply if the grain is carried. In localities 
where the roads are serviceable for wheelbarrows this distance 
can be increased two and one-half times. 


WATER TRANSPORT 


In actual practice the long hauls are made by water, and 
human carriers work from the waterways inland and in the 
hilly country where the rivers are not navigable even for 
small craft. The early development of canals shows that 
the benefits to be derived from water transport have been 
appreciated for many centuries. Thousands of miles of 
canals have been constructed, the best known being the Grand 
Canal which extends from Peking to Hangchow. This 
waterway was begun in 540 B. C., but it has greatly dete- 
riorated of late years through the migrations of the Yellow 
River. Transportation by water is very slow, for steamboats 
are scarcely used except on the Yangtze and a few other 
rivers. The great volume of traffic is handled by man 
power, the small cargo boats being poled or towed, except 
when a favorable wind or current furnishes a brief respite 
to the crew from their arduous labors. So, for purposes of 
relief in times of disaster the present transportation practices 
in China are far from satisfactory, and the lack of adequate 
communications results in great distress. Local famines 
are of perennial occurrence in isolated districts simply because 


ECONOMIC CAUSES OF FAMINE a5 


of lack of facilities for bringing in grain from near-by centers 
where a surplus is available. Residents in one province 
may be dying from starvation while adjoining provinces 
on either side are having excellent crops. 

There are no statistics that give even a general idea of 
the volume of freight transported every year in China except 
for that small portion carried by the railways. Mr. J. E. 
Baker estimates that the freight moved last year on the 7500 
miles of railways if handled by man power would have re- 
quired 25,000,000 men on the basis of a daily ton-kilometer 
haul. In the United States there are approximately 260,000 
miles of railways, and on the same basis 1I,250,000,000 men 
would have been needed to transport the freight carried 
during the same twelve months. Such figures show in a 
striking way not only the difference between the two coun- 
tries in the development of railroad transportation but the 
difference in the standard of living. 








Fic. 25—The city of Hsin An, Chihli, surrounded by flood waters, 1924. 


ne eae 





GHAR DE Ratt 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 


While the fundamental causes of famine are traceable to 
the economic circumstances in which the people live, the 
immediate cause is usually the result of some natural phe- 
nomenon. We are prone to associate the idea of serious 
food shortage with protracted droughts, swarms of locusts, 
widespread floods, or other visitations of nature’s wrath, 
perhaps even to the extent of minimizing the part played 
by social, political, and economic factors. This is to be 
expected, since it is the spectacular or bizarre that is con- 
sidered by the press to be of the greatest human interest 
and since it is through the newspapers that we learn of 
the world’s affairs. Thus the appalling situation of the mil- 
lions of Chinese who live along the Yellow River, a situation 
which assures actual starvation for great numbers upon the 
loss of even one crop, will receive scant mention in the world’s 
news until a flood pushes them over the edge into the abyss 
of famine. 

But there are some famines that are due almost solely to 
natural causes, and there are scarcely any to which natural 
phenomena do not contribute. Probably in no other country 
—certainly in no other country of its size or of anything like 
its population—are the natural features less favorable to 
the inhabitants than in China. The mass of the people 
live on the great alluvial plains traversed by meandering 
rivers, very few of which have well defined channels. The 
rainfall is very irregular, especially in the north. Long 
periods of drought are frequent when the crops are a total 

36 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 37 


failure; severe floods occur when the rivers break their dikes 
and inundate thousands of square miles of farm lands, 
destroying the growing foodstuffs in addition to causing 
loss of life and doing great damage to property. 


- DEFORESTATION 


Scientists ascribe these conditions or their augmentation 
to the depletion of China’s forests by successive generations 
of inhabitants. It is believed that the area now constituting 
China proper was once heavily wooded, and there seem to 
be ample historical and geological proofs of this theory. 

The contrast between present and former conditions in 
Shansi has been recently described by Professor Lowdermilk” 
of Nanking University, who studied on the spot the processes 
of converting a forest cover to denuded slopes. Nine-tenths 
of Shansi is mountainous, and over most of the slope area a 
eradient of 25 per cent obtains. Under the torrential thunder- 
storm type of rainfall the unprotected surface is rapidly 
destroyed. In northern Shansi the soil layer is removed in 
three to ten years. Referring to the former extent of forest, 
Professor Lowdermilk says: ‘‘ Perhaps the most trustworthy 
indications are the existing temple forests. To include all 
areas of similar altitude, or higher, with the existing temple 
forests would in itself indicate an extensive forest cover for 
Shansi.”’ 

We are not concerned here with the reasons for the de- 
struction of this great resource. It is enough to know that 
the actions of former generations have resulted in a deforesta- 
tion more complete than that of any other great nation. 
Not only has deforestation had much to do in bringing about 
present conditions, but it is generally believed that a 
eradual drying up of the areas in the north and west is taking 
place and that more and more of the present fertile country 
will become arid like the regions of Central Asia, and for the 
same reason. 


122 W. C. Lowdermilk: Forest Destruction and Slope Denudation in the Province 
of Shansi, China Journ. of Sci. and Arts, Vol. 4, 1926, pp. 127-135. 


38 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


DROUGHT-SruSTORICAL WATA 


Without doubt the worst famines in China have been 
caused by a lack of sufficient rainfall for a long period. Lack 
of rain occurs most often in northern and central China. 
While most other natural disasters result in only a partial 
destruction of the crops, a drought makes of a normally 
flourishing countryside a barren waste. When it is remem- 
bered that in China almost the entire population exists by 
agriculture, it can be imagined what effect a dry period has, 
especially if it continues for two or three years, as sometimes 
happens. In time of drought it is only in those districts 
where irrigation is practiced that any crop at all can be 
harvested, and unfortunately these districts are too few in 
number and small in extent. 

In 1878 Alexander Hosie, of the British Consular Service 
in China, compiled from the mass of historical and statistical 
data contained in the great Chinese compendium known 
as the T’u Shu Tsih Ch’eng a record of the droughts which 
occurred in China from the commencement of the T’ang 
Dynasty in A.D. 620 to the end of the Ming Dynasty in 
1643." More recently a compilation from the beginning of 
the Christian era up to the end of the last century has been 
made by Dr. Co-Ching Chu, of the National Southeastern 
University, Nanking.44 While these two compilations are 
not in entire harmony—for the records, themselves obviously 
neither complete nor exact, are open to different interpre- 
tations—they give the best available information on the 
history of droughts. 

Mr. Hosie finds that in the millennium from 620 to 1619 
there were recorded 610 years when one or more of the prov- 
inces had insufficient rain, and in 203 years great or very 
severe drought is specified. Probably in those years the 
distress was sufficient to cause famines of some magnitude, 
and that extremely severe food shortage was experienced 


1% Alexander Hosie: Droughts in China, A. D. 620 to 1643, Journ. North China 
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Soc., Vol. 12 (N. S.), 1878, pp. 51-89. 

14Co-Ching Chu: Climatic Pulsations During Historic Time in China, Geogr. 
Rev., Vol. 16, 1926, pp.'274-—282: 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 39 





FIG. 27 


Fic. 26—The floods in Hunan in 1924 were the most destructive experienced 


for fifty years. 
Fic. 27—Havoc left in the wake of the Hunan flood of 1924. 


40 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


during at least 15 of the worst years is indicated by an allu- 
sion to cannibalism in the Chinese records. It is interesting 
to note that cannibalism is mentioned as having occurred 
most often in Shensi, less frequently in Honan, Shansi, 
and Shantung, and only once or twice in provinces farther 
south. The great famines occurred when the droughts were 
of long duration or when the area affected was large. The 
province of Chekiang is recorded as having suffered for the 
six successive years 1170 to 1175 and the four successive 
years 1180 to 1183. Instances when two or more provinces 
were simultaneously affected for several successive years, 
though uncommon, are not rare. For example Chihli and 
Honan were both affected during the period 1296 to 1298 
and in the five consecutive years 1324 to 1328. For the three 
years 990 to 992 the three provinces of Chihli, Honan, and 
Shensi are recorded as having suffered simultaneously. 
Chihli, Honan, Shansi, and Shantung have most frequently 
had droughts simultaneously or in successive years. This 
fact, coupled with the more frequent mention of cannibalism 
in the northern provinces and with the fact that of the 216 
great droughts 100 were in the provinces of Chihli, Honan, 
Shansi, Shantung, and Shensi, leads indisputably to the 
conclusion that it is this part of China north of the Yangtze 
valley and extending to the boundary of Mongolia where a 
chronic drought condition exists (compare Fig. 4). 

Table I, prepared from Mr. Hosie’s paper, shows the 
number of occurrences of drought in each province in hundred- 
year periods, from A. D. 620 to 1619. For convenience in 
comparison the provinces of northern, central, and southern 
China are separated. In the northern group 100 of the 
droughts were listed as great, or very severe, in the central 
group 77, and in the southern group 39. 

Table II, of droughts per century from the beginning of 
the Tang Dynasty to the beginning of the twentieth century, 
is taken from Dr. Chu’s paper. 

In considering these figures it must be borne in mind that 
droughts in China have been catalogued by the historians 
in terms of the suffering of the people. No measured rainfall 


NATURAL GAUSES OF FAMINE AI 


TABLE I—DROUGHTS IN THE DISTRICTS NOW CONSTITUTING THE PROVINCES OF 
CHINA PROPER ARRANGED IN I100-YEAR PERIODS FROM A. D. 620 TO I619 







































































620| 720] 820] 920|1020\1120|1220/1320/1420|1520 
PROVINCE COM CONNEC Whe LO) tO tO (tn Teco") stOld te: e. DOTALS 
719| 819] OIO|IOIO|IIIO/I2IO|IZI9/I419/I519| 1619 
NORTHERN DIVISION 
ELON at Stee eect er to eA 6 Ay | eAri teh 7 Deen 2a es 4 oa 12 
Goibliees sear eta ees eet) ae 2 I S17 |,r0 Tau ace al REORD) 2a 6 07 
SCH SiMe Te eran we eee a LLL 8 || aes 8 8 Ono @) |} i: OI 
Shansi . : 3 2 3 4 Zales ra eee | ey 78 
SANUS een ee, ee 2 I 3 7 @i || 13 7 8 6 OL 
Kans 21ers aan 3 ios 4 
29 | 21 | P5200: 146 N28 HSA sO 44 ay st 443 
CENTRAL DIVISION 
Cie iar o fees ee 8 6 3 sy | eye Mia palelole 24 II3 
Kiangsu # 6 8 Salet aa lecOn |  ronlel © 5 94 
Hupeh . 2 3 I 4 Oe ae Av lator theless 82 
Szechwan. Or eae | Seer | a 17 | — 6 2 2 35 
Anhwei I 2 2 3 I 6 g 4 3 28 
ine || Ayal | L7a LO <2 O2 epee - (tab) BAO ey 352 
SOUTHERN DIVISION 
Sia el were) oa = 2 4 5 AL | ir9 4 5 7 9 59 
Peter ae ere ees Re i 2 3 I 4 uier © 5 Neh 6 50 
pea. £8, fa 6! | = I I |— 3 8 5 3 6), | as: 48 
Wat Ooty a at Meat en ee hall pre I 2 6 el Oo 19 
Mila ial aes ee ir SaaS 19 
Kweichow 4 4 
Kowa tie Ci Oe ee ee he 0 (eS | cae A ed ii 4 2 2 4 75 
Be G Gale lO TOME 3 Ouln2O 1) 124 40.1 e02 220 
Grandelotals, 2) e442 Boa) 04 1°82. )"550)) 126) 128h 133) P70, Tors 






































records were kept, and it was only when crops failed and 
starvation conditions occurred that drought was recognized 
as drought. Hence it is natural that the more densely 
populated provinces such as Kiangsu, Chekiang, Honan, and 
Chihli occur most often in the records, for here a lack of 
rain and the failure of the crops would most quickly bring 
about a state of famine. Furthermore, as Dr. Chu points 
out and as the paucity of records from Kansu would suggest, 
droughts in places a short distance from the capital of the 
empire attract more notice than those at a distance. 

Again, mention is frequently made in the Chinese histories 
of a great drought and the remission of taxes. It has been 


42 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


TABLE JI—NUMBER OF DROUGHTS PER CENTURY OBSERVED DURING 
DIFFERENT DYNASTIES IN CHINESE HISTORY 



































FIFTH DYNASTY SOUTH 
DYNASTY TANG |AND Nortu SuNG| SuNG‘ YUEN MING MANCHU 
Christian 1644-1847 
Era 618—007 908-1126 Ii27—-1270|1280-1 307 |1 368—1643|1861I—1900 
Chang-an Kai-fung Hangchow| Peking Peking Peking 

Capital Shensi Honan Chekiang | Chthli Chihli Chihli 
Honar 2.4 6 4.2 BAZ Sot 9 266 12.4 
Chihl ieee 2.1 Out 9.9 29.9 er 26.9 
SHeNSE 2 Ea: 4.5 6.9 ses; Ee 7.3 9.5 
Shans! sa4 =. es 2.3 ee) 19.6 13:5 Fie! 
Shangtung. . 3.4 ay 6.6 8 4.0 19.0 
Kanstie.t: On i eyo 0.7 5.8 a7 70 
Chekiang . . Bak 4.1 Tee 6.9 16.7 13.9 
Kiangsu. . . A.2 4.1 14.5 10.4 3.3 527 
Hupeh o2o77 3 Tay 23 4.6 127 16.0 Ti 
Szechwan . . cy? — sO) Fp rs 0.4 
Anhwei . . ALS 7.8 90.9 4.6 Dye 14.5 
Kianvs | ey 0.9 6.6 BESS 4.4 13.0 
lelung@ka . 4 ity, Psa] 4.0 6.9 spel 8.7 
Bukien tse. I.4 r:4 5.9 4.6 Fe) Bo7 
Kwangsi . . — 0.5 — 6.9 4.7 21 
Minna ll alaee —= oar si a O75 0.8 
Kweichow. . — sos — — TT 
Kwangtung . aa == | mo 4.6 2.9 | 0.8 

















customary in China as a relief measure to remit taxes in 
areas that have suffered some major catastrophe. But 
ofttimes a distress of small proportions has been magnified 
by the officials of the provinces simply as a measure to obtain 
from the throne the remission of the taxes. This has probably 
led to the inclusion of droughts that were not serious. The 
writer is of the opinion that for this reason the figures for 
Kiangsu and Chekiang and perhaps some of the other cen- 
tral or southern densely populated and influential provinces 
are too large. 


RAINFALL OF CHINA 


The northern provinces, where droughts are most frequent 
and most severe, depend upon the summer monsoons for 
their rainfall. In normal years there is ample precipitation 
in June, July, and August, a slight snowfall occasionally 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 43 


TABLE ILI—NUMBER OF FLOODS PER CENTURY OBSERVED DURING 
DIFFERENT DYNASTIES IN CHINESE HISTORY 



























































FirtH Dynasty | SouTH 

DYNASTY TANG |AND NORTH SUNG| SUNG YUEN MING MANCHU 

Christian 1044-1847 

Era 61S8—907 908-1126 1127—1270|1280—1367|1368—1643|186I—1900 
Chang-an Kai-fung Hangchow| Peking Peking Peking 
Capital Shenst Honan Chekiang Chihli Chihli Chihli 
HonALe eee 4.2 1 hs fee) T23 34.4 De 26.0 
Chiliige a. =: 2.1 6.9 3.9 PAE 1.8 As 
Sitesi se ee, Ost I.8 3.9 4.6 a EO 
Shanels sae, Ory ois — 4.6 Wee E223 
Shangtung . 1.7 5.5 OFF 2027 2.2 bg ig 
KA aSite ene = 0.3 1.8 isa 5-7 — 8.3 
Chekiang . . 1.4 I.4 T75G 4.6 4.0 2307 
Kiangsi 2. 1.4 PA | 9.9 3.4 Th 43.8 
Hupeha.- 0.3 0.9 4.6 4.6 0.7 20.2 
Szechwan . . On — 2.6 — Fok 2.0 
SaAnhwel. o. - 0.7 aay ie) 4.6 — 2075 
Kiangsin == On Tet 5.9 4.6 Tas 21.8 
Monae ee a T:A4 — 3.4 Tex 20.0 
Fukien). = = — 0.9 4.6 4.6 ee: 05 
Kwangsi . . — 0.5 — i.2 0.7 I.6 
Viti |. = = pa = 6.9 25 
Kweichow  . —- — — — — 2:5 
Kwangtung . = 0.5 0.7 Pe rs 7.0 





during the winter, and showers in April and May. Perhaps 
it would be better to say that this is the ideal year rather 
than the normal, for it is not often that the showers occur 
at the planting season in April and May, and many times 
the winter wheat is not favored with snowfall. The total 
annual rainfall is not large. Hann gives 21 inches as an 
average for northern China, 70 per cent of which falls in 
the three months of June, July, and August. The principal 
crops in the north are wheat, which is harvested in June, and 
millet and kaoliang, which are gathered in September. If 
the snows and early spring showers fail, there is a small 
wheat crop; and if the summer rains likewise do not occur, 
there is no harvest for the entire year. 

Although the northern and central parts of the country are 
more susceptible to drought, it occasionally occurs in the 
more southern provinces; but usually it does not affect so 


44. CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


great an area. In the central and southern provinces the 
principal crop, rice, requires a great deal of moisture. 


BREAKING A DROUGHT 


The ancient Chinese methods of breaking a drought are 
interesting, and they are probably as effective as any dis- 
covered in the West. When matters really become serious 
the governors of the provinces concerned issue mandates 
forbidding the slaughter of live stock, and the population 
goes without meat for three days. If this does not bring 
the desired rain, processions are formed, and a sort of holiday 
is declared in order to invoke the heavens. In Hantan, 
Chihli Province, there is an iron tablet which has most 
wonderful properties for bringing rain. In 1924 there was 
a very dry spring, and the summer monsoon did not arrive 
in June as it should. Matters finally reached such a pass 
that the Central Government in desperation decided to 
bring the iron tablet to Peking from the country. This was 
done in July, and lo, the heavens opened, and China had 
one of the worst floods of several decades. 

Before the overthrow of the monarchy the responsibility 
for breaking protracted droughts rested with the Emperor, 
since 1t was his duty to importune the heavens on behalf of 
the people. The prayer of Tao Kwang for rain which was 
made in 1832 is a splendid example of a memorial on this 
subject of drought. The following translation is taken from 
“The Middle Kingdom” by S. Wells Williams. | 


Oh, alas! imperial Heaven, were not the world afflicted by extraordinary 
changes, [ would not dare to present extraordinary services. But this 
year the drought is most unusual. Summer is past, and no rain has fallen. 
Not only do agriculture and human beings feel the dire calamity, but also 
beasts and insects, herbs and trees, almost cease to live. I, the minister 
of Heaven, am placed over mankind, and am responsible for keeping the 
world in order and tranquillizing the people. Although it is now impossible 
for me to sleep or eat with composure, although I am scorched with grief 
and tremble with anxiety, still, after all, no genial and copious showers 
have been obtained. 

Some days ago I fasted, and offered rich sacrifices on the altars of the gods 
of the land and the grain, and had to be thankful for gathering clouds 


NATURAL’ CAUSES OF FAMINE 45 


and slight showers; but not enough to cause gladness. Looking up, I 
consider that Heaven’s heart is benevolence and love. The sole cause is 
the daily deeper atrocity of my sins; but little sincerity and little devotion. 
Hence I have been unable to move Heaven’s heart, and bring down 
abundant blessings. . 

Prostrate I beg imperial Heaven (JIwang Tien) to pardon my ignorance 
and stupidity, and to grant me self-renovation; for myriads of innocent 
people are involved by me, the One man. My sins are so numerous it is 
difficult to escape from them. Summer is past and autumn arrived; to 
wait longer will really be impossible. Knocking head, I pray imperial 
Heaven to hasten and confer gracious deliverance—a speedy and divinely 
beneficial rain, to save the people’s lives and in some degree redeem my 
iniquities. Oh, alas! imperial Heaven, observe these things. Oh, alas! 
imperial Heaven, be gracious to them. I am inexpressibly grieved, alarmed, 
and frightened. Reverently this memorial is presented.¥ 


FLOOD OCCURRENCE 


Floods occur in all sections of the country but in some 
parts more frequently and seriously (compare Table III, 
p. 43). The greatest number of floods occur in the prov- 
inces of Chihli, Shantung, Honan, Kiangsu, Anhwei, and 
Chekiang. Parts of all these provinces lie in the great eastern 
plain, which has been built up of recent river deposits. The 
great plain is practically level for immense distances, and 
the streams are held in their courses by means of earthen 
dikes, most of which were built hundreds of years ago. 
The country is so flat that when the dikes give way a tre- 
mendous area is flooded, and unfortunately this is almost 
always the district that is the most thickly settled and 
under the most intensive cultivation. 

Most of the rivers carry a great quantity of silt which slowly 
builds up the stream bed, necessitating the constant raising 
of the dikes. Eventually a point is reached where even the 
bed of the river is above the land outside the dikes. As 
L. H. Dudley Buxton has well put it, the rivers are on the 
plain, not im it.1®° This is the reason why the heavy silt- 
laden rivers have changed their courses so often, for when 

1S. Wells Williams: The Middle Kingdom (revised edit., 2 vols., New York, 


Loose V Oleot, Ds 407. 
i6],, H. D. Buxton: The Eastern Road, London and New York, 1924. 


46 CHINA? CAND ORF FAMINE 


the dikes fail the entire stream abandons its old bed for the 
lower country, and the task of forcing the flow back into its 
original channel presents too great,a problem for the crude 
methods of the people. 

It is the frequent inundation of the plains that has made 
them so level, for the immense quantity of silt, which but 
for the floods would have been carried by the streams to 
the sea, has been deposited over the country. This process, 
repeated many times during thousands of years, has tended 
to fill the depressions and slowly to build up new land. As 
the process has gone on the gradient of the streams has been 
constantly decreased with corresponding lessening of their 
ability to carry their load of mud to the sea. One beneficial 
effect can be credited to the frequent floods in the plains. 
The new earth deposited is extremely rich, and this constant 
acquisition of virgin soil has helped to keep up the pro- 
ductivity of the country. 


SLow DRAINAGE OF FLOOD WATERS 


The immediate loss of life and property is not the only 
terrible aspect of a flood, but also the wholesale destruction 
of the growing crops and the slow drainage which often pre- 
vents the next planting. In some regions it takes as much 
as two or three years for the waters of a severe inundation 
to find their way to the sea. This slow drainage, while due 
in part to the level nature of the country, is probably in- 
fluenced to a greater extent by the network of dikes built 
along the streams and canals. These hold back the flood 
waters until their volume overtops the dikes, or the latter 
are breached by wave action, and then the water rushes on 
until it reaches the next obstruction. Naturally every effort 
is made by the natives, who are protected by these dikes, 
to postpone the evil day when their own fields will be covered 
with water, and they carefully patrol them to prevent the 
inhabitants of inundated districts from making breaches 
to hasten the draining of their own land. 

The lack of forest cover on the hills results in an extremely 
rapid run-off; and this, coupled with the torrential rains 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 47 


110 2 


200 300 400 500 KILOMETERS,-” 
200 300 MILES,” 


“ 
ano 


Laomal 


be 2 
A OMG pe SS 
ee : 
ae ee \ Pieking 
| ; Spr 


CHIHLI- 


Sy Sep y . 3 Pet ‘ 


NS (ye LL O_W. 
“Meese 1 
nee | 


Tungkwan® ot 
Siano S 


KweE } 


Kweiyango 


ESS | 


FLOODS OF 1924 


Data from 20 

















Flooded areas 





EER Eo WW2 


Fic. 28—Map showing the flooded areas in 1924. Scale I : 17,500,000. 


48 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


liable to occur in almost any part of the country, transforms 
even dry stream beds into raging torrents within a very brief 
time. Although these conditions are prevalent in nearly all 
the provinces, there are certain districts where the configura- 
tion of the land and the nature of the rivers cause disasters 
of especial severity and frequency. 


THE Hwal RIVER 


The first in importance, from the point of view of crop 
losses and resultant famine distress, is in the valley of the Hwai 
in the provinces of Anhwei and Kiangsu. The Hwai River, 
which rises in Honan and flows through Anhwei into Kiangsu, 
has no regular channel to the sea but has emptied into 
Hungtze Lake since the Yellow River in 1191 burst its banks 
and usurped the original channel of the Hwai. In normal 
years when the rainfall is not too great and is sufficiently 
distributed the result of the summer rains is simply to raise 
the water level in the lake and perhaps to inundate a stretch 
of country contiguous to its boundary, the flood waters 
finding their way to the sea through the Grand Canal and 
the Yangtze River. But when the rainfall is unusually heavy, 
as happens every few years, the capacity of the lake is not 
sufficient as a ponding basin. Mr. John R. Freeman, the 
eminent American hydraulic engineer, after a brief examina- 
tion of this problem reported as follows: 

. Although much of this area is flat and absorptive, floods some- 
times run off this large area into the vast, shallow Hungtze Lake at a 
rate of more than 200,000 cubic feet per second, as estimated from flood 
marks established by the American Red Cross engineers in 1914, and 
even reached the rate of 440,000 cubic feet per second in the exceptionally 
high flood of 1916, as measured by the engineers of the Kiang-Hwai Board. 

Neither the St. Lawrence River at Montreal, nor the Mississippi 
River above the entrance of the Missouri, at its greatest flood period 
carries so high a rate of discharge. 

The Hungtze Lake acts as a great natural equalizer and its outflow is 
somewhat controlled by sluiceways; but the flood trying to escape there- 
from is pent in on the north by a broad ridge of sediment and dikes per- 
taining to the abandoned Yellow River channel and is held back on the 
east by the embankments on the Grand Canal, which to the limit of its 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 49 


capacity strives to lead the flood south to the Yangtze River, in which it 
is somewhat aided by the flow to the Yangtze through a chain of lakes. 
These great floods give more than the channels can accommodate and 
they rupture the Grand Canal dikes, but even when the flood breaks over 
and sweeps away this barrier, its free escape seaward over the vast, low- 
lying area of more than fifty miles wide by one hundred miles long, is 
barred by the great Mari- 
time Dike, known as the es A ad 20 [Le 
Fan Kung Dike, which was PPR. 
built about 900 years ago 
to protect this low-lying 
region from the sea. 

The vast networkof large 
and small canals within 
thisarea and the sluiceways 
through the Maritime Dike, 
all in combination, are ut- 
terly insufficient to safely 
or promptly discharge such 
a flood.” 


After the flood of 
IQI1I with its resulting 
immense loss of lifeand 
property, the Amert- 


(ffi ayy 
| eff ai 
hy J 40 
AMEE es i 








ww) 
) 










se SS 


— | \ - a . ex >: 

cansRed Gross, under |) =-4 VAN HWE Fi fronnem el 

4 4 | YB “ecm 

an arrangement with Bose a ben | 
the Chinese govern- m ug Dig fm fia 

nove’ MIGRATIONS OF YELLOW RIVER 





Ss 
ment, sent a Board of COURSES oF YeLLow RIVER CHINA INTERNATIONAL FAMINE RELIEF COMMISSION 


BEFORE YEAR 1324 100 150 MILES 


Engineers headed Dy |r rion mownos ae merase ay cpiguud OPPErED 8 a Fad. 
sin OMIT et Poe es ee 
Sibert to investigate 
the Hwai River Con- 
servancy Project. In its report this Board stated that the 
last flood had inundated 10,470 square miles in Anhwei and 
2300 square miles in Kiangsu and that these provinces are 
subject to a disaster of equal severity on the average once 
every six or seven years and a disaster of minor importance 
every three or four years. This area, larger than Belgium, 
comprises some of the best farming land in all China. 





Fic. 29—Map showing historical migrations 
of the Yellow River. 


17 See J. R. Freeman: Flood Problems in China, Trans. Amer. Soc. of Civil En- 
gineers, Vol. 85, 1922, pp. 1405-1460. 


50 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Assuming that the normal yield of rice is 2000 pounds 
an acre, the loss due to one of these serious floods is more 
than 16,000,000,000 pounds; and, counting the less severe 
inundations, probably 3,000,000,000 pounds of China’s 
principal food is destroyed annually as a result of these catas- 
trophes. This is sufficient to feed more than 6,000,000 


/ 


Bue ‘ 
peas SS 
: Se” 5 oe 
== WEIHWE! FU 
oe \ pee he 

























we 
Do FAN HS g 
See, é 
ret, SHOW CHANG HS. GO / 
0 enh f LOW 
Pu CHOW one 
Ye “CHIU S nest 
CHANG YUAN HS pia a 
BR ge 
Ce, Sy) Ge 
TUNG Sine HS 
et o / 3 
V4 4,KAO CHENG HS. TSAOGHOW FU f 
LAN YI Pe Ne 
COURSE OF YELLOW RIVER PRIOR TO YEAR 1852 
20 40 60 80 100 KILOMETERS 
St _t. t—__1,—+ + +, 
tt) 10 20 30 40 50 60 MILES 
\ 
34 
precereettemsereteme DIKE OF YELLOW RIVER 
34 ee 











Fic. 30—Dike system of the lower course of the Yellow River. Scale approxi- 
mately I : 3,000,000. 


adults. Allowing for the children, more than 7,000,000 of 
the population could be supported from this annual wastage. 

Coupled with the damage occasioned by the years of 
high water is the loss that results from the lack of drainage 
of Hungtze Lake and the other low-lying regions. It is 
estimated that more than 600,000 acres could be reclaimed 
if the proper conservancy scheme were carried out. This 
would mean an increase of more than 1,200,000,000 pounds 
of rice annually—sufficient to feed a population of nearly 
3,000,000. In other words the total annual loss to the 


NA EU RAESGAUSESSORSE AMINE 51 


country from this uncontrolled river is sufficient to provide 
food for approximately 10,000,000 people. 


Hee YELLOWSRIVER 


’’ 


The Hwang Ho, or Yellow River, ‘‘China’s Sorrow, 
seems to have been a problem since the dawn of history. 








‘ 18 







Ae 
e Nt pause 
TSING CHENG HS, ™*s 


S36 


‘ CHINA INTERNATIONAL FAMINE. RELIEF COMMISSION 
Yi LOWER COURSE OF YELLOW RIVER 


SHOWING 


NSsDIKESoOYOITEM 





JANUARY, 1926 PREPARED BY Cp Yeutl 
PEKING TRACED BY C. P. Udi 


The lower course of the Yellow River has constantly fluctuated. Compare 
Figure 29. 


The earliest annals give accounts of great inundations and of 
efforts to control the ravages of this menace. It is difficult 
to present an idea of the extent of the damage caused by 
the Yellow River floods. They occur at present less often than 
along the Hwai, and the area affected varies in extent from 
a few to many thousand square miles. The river has been 
meandering back and forth for thousands of years, as can be 
seen from the extent of the delta built up. It is not possible 
to trace all the courses of the river even in historic time, but 
the accompanying map (Fig. 29) is prepared from the most 


52 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


=< 


authentic material so far available. The Yellow River has 
flowed into the sea as far north as Tientsin, and its most 
southerly outlet was probably through the Yangtze River 
at Shanghai. | 

While floods of relatively minor importance occur as often 
as once or twice in every decade, there have been but three 
ereat migrations of the river in the past thousand years. 
On several occasions, however, there have been extremely 
severe floods when the river has left its course but later 
returned to its old bed. Such an instance is the flood of 1887— 
1889 when a break occurred in the southern dike in the 
province of Honan. According to Chinese official records 
more than 2,000,000 people lost their lives either from drown- 
ing or from starvation during the resulting famine, and 
nearly the whole province of Honan south of the river was 
inundated. : 

It is not only in times of unusually high water that there 
is danger of flood along the Yellow River. The distance 
between the dikes is great, and this permits of considerable 
meandering so that the current is constantly shifting from 
side to side. Hence when the river is rising the current may 
suddenly swing in toward a dike in an unprotected stretch, 
which, unless rapid and adequate measures are taken, soon 
crumbles away. This is what happened in Shantung Province 
in the summer and fall of 1925 when the southern dike was 
breached and an area of about 800 square miles was flooded. 
The loss in crops alone was estimated at $20,000,000, and 
yet the river was not at an unusually high stage when the 
disaster occurred. 


THE RIVERS OF CHIHLI PROVINCE 


There are eight principal rivers entering the Chihli plain. 
In ancient times these streams reached the sea through many 
channels. But when the Grand Canal was extended from 
the Yellow River to Tientsin in the thirteenth century no 
crossings were provided, or if provided were not maintained, 
and the waters were all led into the Hai Ho, which flows 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 53 


through Tientsin. This was already the outlet for the Pei 
Ho and the Yung Ting Ho, and its capacity has not been 
sufficient to carry off the flood waters in years when the rain- 
fall has been heavy. Since 1891 there have been seven 
serious inundations of the central Chihli plain. It would 
therefore appear that this district is subject to floods on the 
average once every six or seven years. The total catchment 
area is more than 88,000 square miles; and when it is con- 
sidered that all but a very small part of this water must 
reach the sea through the Hai Ho, a small stream, it can 
be understood why these disasters occur. The last serious 
Chihli flood was in the summer of 1924. During the severe 
storms in July it was estimated that the inflow into the river 
system was 25 times as great as the outflow through the 
Hai Ho. The difficulty of obtaining accurate reports simul- 
taneously from various sections of the province makes it 
impossible to state exactly what extent of country was in- 
undated at any one time; but it has been reliably established 
that an area of no less than 5000 square miles was covered 
with water long enough to destroy completely the growing 
crop which should have been harvested in September and 
October and that a large portion of this area was still in- 
undated during the autumn, thus preventing the planting 
of the winter wheat. The lower section of the plain is but 
a little above sea level, and it usually takes two or three 
years for all the flood waters to reach the ocean. 

If the value of the crop be put at only $30 an acre, the 
loss to the province was nearly $100,000,000, Chinese cur- 
rency, simply from the destruction of growing foodstufts. 
When to this are added the losses due to failure to plant the 
winter wheat and subsequent crops the sum will exceed 
$125,000,000. As such a catastrophe happens on the average 
every six or seven years, it may be estimated that the annual 
loss from these floods is not less than $18,000,000. This 
sum is sufficient to provide a livelihood for 120,000 families, 
or more than 600,000 people, according to the standard of 
living now prevailing in northern China. Nor must one 
overlook the loss from demolition of buildings and the 


54 CHINA: EANDSOP FAMINE 





Fic. 31—In its upper reaches the Yellow River flows through hilly country. 

Fic. 32—Tungkwan, below which the Yellow River enters on its lower course. 

Fic. 33—The lower Yellow River is confined between dikes some of which are 
stone-faced. 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE BG 








Fic. 36 
Fic. 34—Break of a Kan River dike, Kiangsi, probably because of lack of 


proper upkeep. 
Fic. 35—Break of a Yellow River dike in Shantung, 1925. 


Fic. 36—One of the dike breaks that caused the Chihli floods of 1924. 


56 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


drowning of live stock and of human beings. In 1917 the 
dikes which protect Tientsin gave way, and damage to the 
extent of many millions of dollars was done in the city itself. 
In 1924 a similar catastrophe was narrowly averted: the 
principal seaport of northern China stands in constant danger 
of inundation with each successive flood. 

In the Kan River delta region of Kiangsi Province large 
areas between the various mouths of the river and around 
the Poyang Lake have been diked in and produce a good 
yield of rice annually. In the 1924 floods most of these dikes 
were breached, and hundreds of square miles of good farming 
land were covered with water. 

It is not intended to discuss here all the areas of China 
subject to floods; in fact, there is not sufficient dependable 
information concerning many of them to make it possible 
to give more than a general indication of the damage wrought 
by inundations. The specific examples given have been 
selected because in their case more reliable data are available 
and because they are the most frequently or most severely 
affected. If a thorough tabulation of the annual loss due 
to this cause could be made, the sum arrived at would reach 
a staggering total. In 1922-1923 there was a severe flood 
of the Tsao Ngo River in Chekiang.. In 1924 central China 
was visited by the worst inundation recorded in many 
years, and large areas in Hunan, Hupeh, and Kiangsi were 
covered with water by an overflow of the Siang, the Kan, 
and the Yangtze Rivers. The same year saw a serious flood 
of the West River in Kwangsi and of the Min River in Fukien, 
as well as the flood in Chihli already mentioned. Other 
areas where floods occur include the basins of the following 
rivers: the Fen (Shansi), the Han (Hupeh), the Pearl 
(<wangtung), the Liao (Manchuria), and the Min (Fukien). 

Mention has already been made of the terraces on the 
hillsides, built by the labor of centuries. In the torrential 
rains that occur every few years these hillside fields are 
sometimes destroyed over wide areas. In the hilly region 
of southwestern Chihli during the storms of 1924, 23 inches 
of rain fell in 33 hours at one place, and other places registered 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 57 





Fic. 37—A typical dike break. Chihli flood of 1924. (Photograph by Law- 


rence Impey.) 
Fic. 38—When the dikes break, immense areas are flooded. (Photograph 


by W. H. Mallory.) 


58 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


18 inches in 32 hours and 9 inches in 9 hours. No wonder 
that the fields are washed away. In some districts the 
destruction from this cause is so complete that whole villages 
are forced to seek new homes. | 

Then again, rich farming country near the foothills is 
ofttimes destroyed by the flooding of the streams which 
carry with them not only coarse sand and pebbles but also 
small boulders. There are places where such a heavy deposit 
of sand and stones is left on the fields after a flood season 
that they have to be abandoned. The loss from this source 
in Chekiang Province during the 1922 floods was very large. 


tis bean cor (eine 


Locusts are one of the three principal natural causes 
of famine. This pest, which consumes the growing crops, 
leaves the countryside as barren as a protracted drought. 
While these insects are essentially herbivorous, they are 
known to attack and absolutely ruin even the trees; in this 
respect they are more damaging than a lack of rain. 

Many stories are told of the countless numbers of locusts 
composing a migration. They always move in the daytime, 
and sometimes the swarms are so dense as to shut out com- 
pletely the light of the sun. One invasion in Russia is said 
to have occupied an area twenty miles both in length and in © 
breadth. In addition to the distress which follows the de- 
struction of their crops, the people of a locust-infected district 
are ofttimes subjected to epidemics caused by the decayed 
insects getting into wells, cisterns, and reservoirs and clogging 
the drains, thus poisoning the drinking water. 

There is no continent and almost no part of the world that 
has not been visited at one time or another by this scourge: 
only the arctic regions appear to be immune. But it is 
especially the territories between latitude 20° and 45° N. 
and between 15° and 45° S. that suffer most from locusts.* 

In his paper on calamities M. Raoul Montandon, President 
of the Geographical Society of Geneva, lists the major dis- 


18 Paul Vayssiére: Le probléme acridien et sa solution internationale, Matériaux 
pour l’ Etude des Calamités, Geneva, Vol. I, 1924, pp. 122-158 and 274-282. 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 59 


asters that have followed invasions of locusts, beginning 
from the year 125 B. C.!® In this list China appears but 
three times, namely in the years 1835, 1878, and 1892. The 
failure to include catastrophes which occurred prior to the 
nineteenth century was probably due to the lack of inter- 
course between China and the West in former times which 
made reliable data difficult to obtain. The 162 famines 
recorded in the Chinese historical records for Shensi Province 
include 20 which were caused, in whole or in part, by locusts. 

Alexander Hosie in his studies of the Chinese histories 
already referred to mentions visitations of locusts in the 
following provinces and years between A. D. 620 and 1643: 
840 (Fukien); 869; 953; 991 (Shantung); 1016 (Chihli and 
Honan); 1027 (Shensi and Honan); 1033; 1053; 1128; 1176 
(North China); 1215 (Central China); 1240 (Kiangsi); 1298 
(Kiangsu); 1310 (North China); 1326 (Kwangsi); 1330 
(Hunan); 1334 (Central China); 1541 (Chihli); 1581 (Che- 
kiang); 1605 and 1640 (Chekiang). 

It would seem from the above list that while locusts have 
visited nearly all parts of the country it is the central and 
northern provinces that have been most often attacked by 
the scourge. 

The available information would indicate that locusts 
have not caused such serious disasters in China as in other 
countries subject to their depredations. Rather they have 
served to aggravate bad conditions due to other causes. This 
is notably the case in the visitation of 1878, which followed 
two years of drought in northern China. It must also be 
remembered that the northern Chinese are accustomed to 
eating locusts, a practice which would in some degree recom- 
pense the farmers for the losses sustained by the action of 
the insects on the crops. 


EARTHQUAKES 


Although China lies outside the great earthquake zones of 
the world (the Pacific girdle and the Mediterranean-Himala- 
19 Raoul Montandon: A propos du projet Ciraolo: Une carte mondiale de distri- 


bution géographique des calamités, Rev. Internatl. de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva, Olea: 
1923, DP. 271-344. 


60 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


yan belt) the country is not exempt from seismic disasters. 
A list compiled from the historical records mentions 3394 
earthquakes for the 3693 years between 1767 B. C. and 
1896 A. D.2° The greatest catastrophe of this nature occurred 
in 1556 in the Wei Ho Valley when 800,000 people of Shensi, 
Shansi, and Honan are said to have lost their lives. Among 
the regions most subject to seismic disturbances particular 
interest attaches to the Kansu-Shensi area because of the 
geological nature of the terrain. This area is in the loess, 
the peculiar yellcw-colored silt or loam that covers vast 
areas of northern China. Owing to the vertical cleavage of 
the loess the deeply eroded hills rise almost perpendicularly 
from the valleys, and a severe earthquake shock easily dis- 
places this loose earth and causes it to slide down into the 
valleys in tremendous quantities. Seismic disturbances 
do not usually destroy sufficient foodstuffs to cause shortage, 
although the victims of such a cataclysm may suffer want 
for a few days until broken communications can be reéstab- 
lished. In the loess country, however, a severe quake may 
destroy both grain reserves and growing crops. 


THE KANSU EARTHQUAKE OF 1920 


In the great earthquake which occurred in eastern Kansu 
on December 16, 1920, there are several points of particular 
interest which are worthy of comment here. The severity 
of the distress following a quake is usually dependent upon 
the density of population and number of buildings in the 
affected district. For instance, the earthquake which took 
place in Vernyi, Turkestan, in 1911 resulted in but 400 deaths, 
although from a seismic point of view it was a severe shock; 
while more than 100,000 people are said to have perished 
in the Japan disaster of September I, 1923, which demolished 
the populous cities of Yokohama and Tokyo. China is 
indeed a land of contrasts where almost every rule is broken. 
Here in Kansu it was the country population that suffered 


*” Wong Wen-Hao: L’influence sismogénique de certaines structures géologiques 
de la Chine, Comptes Rendus Congrés Géol. Internatl. XIII, Belgium, 10922, fasc. 
2, Liége, 1925, pp. I16I—-1197. 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 61 





Fic. 39—-In the Kansu earthquake mountains of loess slid into the valleys. 
Fic. 40—Cave dwellings in the loess country. 


62 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


the most. This is easily explainable. Scarcity of wood has 
forced the farmers to make their homes in caves which they 
excavate in the hillsides.2!_ Very few of the cave dwellers 
in the affected district escaped, for the first shock occurred 

t 7 p. m., and, since it was winter time and dark, the people 
were all in their earthen retreats and were buried under many 
feet of loose earth before they realized what was taking place. 
The city of IKtuytian with a population of about 70,000 reported 
only 400 deaths, while 40,000 perished in the surrounding 
country districts. 

Since this disaster occurred in the early part of the winter 
the crops had all been harvested, the threshing was done, 
and the supply of grain needed to support the family until 
the next harvest was stored in the cliff dwellings. It thus 
happened that the grain reserves in the area worst affected 
were practically all destroyed. 

The change effected in the topography by this earthquake 
was very great. Landslides blocked the rivers, in many cases 
changing their courses. Some of the dams were as much as a 
mile thick and tens of feet in height; and, though every effort 
was made by the people and relief committees to open them 
before the high-water season, in some places it was impossible 
to do anything, and much distress was caused by floods. 


THE YUNNAN EARTHQUAKE OF 1925 


The earthquake which took place in Western Yunnan on 
March 16, 1925, did not present any unusual features. The 
greatest loss of life occurred in the urban districts. Fortu- 
nately the population was not dense, for one out of every 
eighteen was killed over an area of six counties. The destitute, 
who numbered nearly 100,000, were left without food, cloth- 
ing, or shelter. Such a condition in China invariably means 
the starvation of a considerable number of people, and the 
Chinese are accustomed to regard such local distress as a 
famine. According to the accepted usage of the term in 
other countries, it is hardly correct to list a catastrophe such 


*1 Hor a discussion of the type of habitation see M. L. Fuller and F. G. Clapp: 
Loess and Rock Dwellings of Shensi, China, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 14, 1924, pp. 215-226. 


NATURAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 63 


) 


as occurred at Talifu as a famine emergency. It must be 
remembered, however, that there are few other countries 
where an adjustment of the destitute population could not 
have been so effected as to prevent any appreciable number 
from dying for lack of food. 


TYPHOONS 


The China coast is not subject to the tidal waves, so-called, 
of seismic or volcanic origin; but the southeastern coast is 
frequently visited by severe wind storms or typhoons, and 
a phenomenon not greatly different from a tidal wave occurs 
where the sea walls are destroyed and the lands along the 
shores are flooded by sea water. The average number of 
typhoons is sixteen a year. These cyclonic storms gather 
in the Pacific Ocean near the island of Guam and take a 
northwesterly direction, rarely reaching as far north as 
Shanghai. The storm center moves forward at from 8 to 50 
miles an hour, and the wind, which blows in a circle counter- 
clockwise around the center, varies from 50 to I10 miles an 
hour in velocity. 

The damage from typhoons is restricted to a narrow area 
along the coast; suffering is caused mainly by the destruction 
of property, and loss of life by falling buildings. Many 
animals are killed, but the crops are not affected excepting 
where the sea walls are destroyed and salt water invades the 
fields. The loss of foodstuffs from disasters of this sort 1s 
not sufficient to cause famine, although there is some loss 
of life from starvation after a severe visitation such as oc- 
curred at Swatow in the summer of 1922. 





Fic. 41—The oft-quoted Chinese pacifism is a myth: an army on the march. 


GHA Ele Reber 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 


China, although so often spoken of as a pacifist country, 
has seen as much if not more civil strife than any Western 
power. Mark Twain neither consulted history nor studied 
Chinese conditions when he remarked that ‘‘a disorderly 
Chinaman was a rare bird.’’ He had probably heard some- 
thing about the quietism which is the basis of Chinese philoso- 
phy. Or perhaps this was one of the rare bits of humor that 
made him so justly famous. Chinese pacifism is a beautiful 
ideal which has never, so far as the facts show, been taken 
down from its high theoretical plane and applied to the con- 
crete requirements of daily existence. Chinese provinces have 
rebelled time and time again against the central authority. 
The histories are full of accounts of these numberless insur- 
rections and the expeditions sent to quell them. China has 
carried out conquests as wide as those of any other great 
power, and the Hans even before the Christian era ruled a 
territory greater in extent than the contemporary Roman 
Empire—territory wrested by force from unwilling races. 
It will be said, of course, that the average Chinese does 
not like to fight and does not admire war. But what reason- 
able man does? 


THE GOVERNMENT AND THE REVOLUTION OF IQII 


In the whole course of its dynastic history from the third 
century before Christ, when feudalism came to an end, to 
1911, there was no change in the fundamental concepts of 

64 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 65 


the government of monarchical China. This is the more 
remarkable in that throughout all these years the govern- 
ment was a government of men, not a government of laws. 
But Confucian political theory was so pervasive that it 
almost took on the form of a constitution, leading some 
writers to say that China’s old system was a perfect example 
of a constitutional monarchy. Other writers sometimes 
refer to the base of China’s monarchical government as 
theocratic; but this hardly seems to be warranted by the 
facts. True it is that the occupant of the throne was some- 
times called the Son of Heaven, holding his commission from 
above; but not enough stress is placed on the elusive language 
with which the Chinese clothe their thought. Chinese em- 
perors were never really thought of as divine appointees in 
the sense that they were responsible only to a Supreme Being. 
They were not even regarded as absolutists; nor did they ever 
claim to be. Most founders of new dynasties were content 
to claim kinship with past emperors, or with persons of 
noble birth, in order to justify their assumption of sovereign 
power. 

It seems to the writer that the proper approach to the 
Chinese monarchical system is that taken by the Chinese 
themselves—that the people are the sea and the emperor a 
boat on the sea. If the sea became too stormy, then the 
boat capsized and that was the end of it. This more ade- 
quately expressed the Chinese idea than the explanation 
sometimes offered to excuse the frequent challenges to kingly 
power, namely, that the emperor’s mandate from Heaven 
had been exhausted. Chinese government was not divine 
but personal, paternalistic; the people were the children of 
Heaven and the emperor was the father of the people, duly 
approved by his children and responsible to them. 

In such an intensely paternalistic state, good government 
depended in a peculiar way on good men, and, if any king 
showed particular goodness and beneficence, his people 
gradually enveloped him in their speech and memorials 
with heavenly attributes, perhaps as the Son of Heaven. 
But this was merely a tribute to his rule and the regard in 


66 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


which he was held by his subjects; the people were specially 
favored by Heaven to have such a king father. 

It follows that the overthrow of an old dynasty and the 
establishment of a new one involved troubles enough to 
affect production materially. Disorganization must have 
gone on many years before the close of the dynasty. That 
was the reason for its displacement, and misrule and op- 
pression had to go some lengths in China before displacement 
could be effected. The Chinese are proverbially lacking in 
organization, as we understand it, and a reigning house long 
outlived the period of its beneficence and of its mandate 
before it was deposed. As a matter of fact, of the two ways 
in which a personal government can be overthrown—by 
aggression from without or by discord from within—changes 
in China have been brought about more often by alien ele- 
ments. Discord would sometimes simmer for years until 
some outside force succeeded in stirring it into a political 
upheaval. 

But the 1911 revolution, which saw the collapse of the 
Manchu house, was inspired and carried out from within. 
Even at the time of the Taiping Rebellion the throne had 
exhausted its mandate; but outside agencies in this case 
were employed, not to succeed it but to prop it up. It lan- 
cuished on, effete and enwrapt in a formalism which negatived 
its paternalistic functions, until the dawn of the twentieth 
century, when the Boxer Rebellion would probably have 
consigned it to oblivion but for the adroit turning of the tide 
of revolt in the direction of the foreigners. And it was the 
foreigner again that was responsible for the return to power 
of the dynasty. In r1or1, after these two attempts at artificial 
respiration, it expired, leaving no head to take its place. 

For three thousand years the Middle Kingdom had been 
governed like a family by a king father. In 1911 the people 
had the power suddenly thrust into their own hands, and it 
was their task to transplant the idea of sovereignty in them- 
selves; in other words to personify the idea of the state. 
The task might have been easier if the leaders of the revolu- 
tion had been possessed of some plan or organization. But 


POEGRIGAI Cn USborOnh sr AMINE 67 


they had only many paper plans culled from textbooks and 
no organization except those bred in secret societies. No 
genius appeared who could become a new “Father of the 
People’”’ until the abstract idea of sovereignty had evolved 
into a force equal to that exercised through the throne. “Let 
there be men, and the government will flourish,’ said Con- 
fucius. ‘‘Without the men, government decays and ceases.”’ 
The breakdown of government, as old China knew it, is 
now probably more complete than it has been for centuries. 

There being no new outstanding leaders in the new re- 
public, the old officials came into possession of the reins of 
government. A so-called republican administration was set 
up in Peking, but it endeavored to function according to 
the old monarchical plan of centralized authority at the 
capital, every provincial official of any importance being 
selected by a more or less self-appointed “‘president.”’ This 
central authority has grown weaker and weaker until at 
present its mandates are practically without effect. In the 
meantime, the military leaders in the various provinces, 
realizing their power and subject to no restraining influence, 
have worked each for himself, rising and falling like the tide. 
Temporary combinations are effected for the purpose of 
eliminating any one who appears to be gaining the ascendency ; 
but, when this is accomplished, the allies split up to fight 
among themselves until the time is ripe for another effort at 
military consolidation. 

All men are equal; all claim the same privilege of preying 
on their fellows. The idea of responsibility to the state, in 
the absence of a monarch, is not yet envisaged; it hardly 
enters at all into the consideration of modern Chinese leaders, 
for the reason that the old spirit of family enrichment at the 
expense of other families is the paramount motive. 


DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC GRANARY SYSTEM 


One of the first results of the overthrow of the Manchu 
régime—and a matter of vital importance in time of famine— 
was the abolition of the public granaries maintained in the 


68 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


provinces. The accumulation of a surplus of foodstuffs 
against times of need was a long-established policy of the 
government. Every year the farmers were required to turn 
over a portion of their grain crops to the authorities for 
storage in the public granaries, which were kept full. To 
prevent the stock from deteriorating with age as much old 
grain was sold each year as was received of new. By this 
system there was available in all walled cities throughout 
the interior a surplus of food which was distributed in times 
of want. While this did not prevent famines when the 
crops failed over wide areas, it greatly mitigated the suffering 
of the people, saved some lives, and was a means by which 
the population might be fed before relief from outside was 
available. In minor disasters these supplies were sufficient 
to meet the needs. This was the plan followed with con- 
spicuous success by Joseph in Egypt. } 

It was said that the contents of the granaries were sold 
in 1912 in order to “‘defray the expenses of the revolution”’; 
but the granaries have not been restocked by the republican 
government, and this most important system is now aban- 
doned. Nowhere in China proper, but only in sparsely 
populated and distant Tibet, are public granaries now to be 
found. 

Even before the revolution the effectiveness of the granary 
system began to fall off, owing to official corruption. The 
following passage from the Peking Gazette quoted in “‘ Chinese 
Life in Town and Country,” by H. Twitchell, shows the 
condition of affairs in 1897. 


The censor Chang-chao-lan denounces the practice, prevalent among 
the magistrates, of speculating with the cereals stored in the public grana- 
ries, with the result that they become bankrupt and are unable to settle 
their accounts with the Government. The functionaries should constantly 
bear in mind that every walled city must reserve in its public granaries 
a quantity of cereals proportioned to its population, to be distributed in 
case of inundations, famine, war, or other disaster. They are authorised, how- 
ever, tosell a certain portion of the old stock and replenish it with the fresh 
harvest. Instead of doing that, the censor accuses them of allowing the 
old grain to mould in the granaries and of selling the fresh for their own 
profit, It is easy to foresee what the result of such a course would be in 


POLDUIC@CAISGAUSHS OFF EAIVITIN Ee 69 





Fic. 43 


Fic. 42—The flood that swept Kalgan in 1924 could have been prevented if 


official action had been taken in time. 
Fic. 43—The Shantung flood of the Yellow River, 1925, was due to official 


negligence. 


70 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


time of need. We seriously exhort the divers viceroys and governors 
of our provinces to look into this matter and order the entire stock of 
cereals sold, the proceeds to be placed at interest. Furthermore, we 
order each magistrate to submit to us each‘year an exact account of the 
amounts so placed and of the contents of the public storehouses.” 


REMISSION OF TAXES IN FAMINE YEARS 


One of the first ameliorative measures adopted by effective 
governments in China in the past has been tax remission 
in the famine districts during the period of distress. This 
custom is followed in principle even now during these days 
of disorganization but not in a manner to afford the people 
material help. For, while the tax is remitted to the starving 
country population, new methods of obtaining revenue are 
devised by the military officials, methods that greatly in- 
crease prices and more than offset the benefits of the remitted 
tax. These new methods of securing an increased income 
range all the way from petty taxes on luxuries to a heavy 
levy on necessities—as, for instance, salt—and include such 
innovations as a re-registry fee for all land deeds at an 
exorbitant figure. Coupled with these more or less orderly 
processes of obtaining funds is the practice in times of 
emergency of a demand on Chambers of Commerce for 
huge “‘loans,”’ the collection of taxes several years in advance, 
and the issue of millions of dollars in worthless paper notes 
forced on merchants at the point of the bayonet. 

Were this revenue utilized for maintaining a decent and 
efficient administration, its collection would not so seriously 
affect the people, for the total sum is not great when com- 
pared with the receipts of other governments; but, un- 
fortunately, the great bulk of it goes to the enrichment of 
unscrupulous officials. 

Relief funds too have been misappropriated. After the 
disastrous floods of 1924 the government was importuned 
to undertake relief work. After some delay it was decided 
that a surtax should be imposed throughout the country 


22H. Twitchell: Chinese Life in Town and Country, Adapted from the French of 
Emile Bard (Series: Our Asiatic Neighbors), New York, 1905, pp. 91-92. 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE pias 


on all railway tickets and telegrams to raise funds for famine 
purposes. It was called a famine-relief surtax and was 
collected for over a year. After a lapse of some months 
inquiries were made as to how the receipts were being utilized, 
but up to the present time no statement has ever been made 
of the amount collected. In only one or two districts, where 
the funds were not remitted to Peking but were spent by 
the local authorities, were the proceeds of this surtax known 
to have been expended for famine relief. The surtax was 
first imposed for a period of six months. At the end of that 
time it was extended for the avowed purpose of raising funds 
for the support of the government universities in Peking, 
but it was still called a famine-relief surtax. It is not even 
possible to state whether or not the funds collected were 
used for the universities: the Famine Commission has been 
unable to find any published reports. 


FAMINE PREVENTION NEGLECTED 


Grievous as is the failure of the government to provide 
succor for the population in time of famine, its most serious 
shortcoming is its neglect of necessary prevention work. 
It is this neglect that has caused such an increase in the 
number and severity of famines in late years. 

A period of poor government is always marked by serious 
floods. As has been explained before, most of China’s rivers 
are artificially controlled by an extensive and intricate system 
of diking. These dikes, built centuries ago, must be constantly 
maintained and occasionally heightened. Changes in the 
course of the rivers between the dikes require the construc- 
tion of special works to avert the danger of breaches during 
the high-water season, and an organization must be supported 
to patrol the rivers and to plan and execute the needed 
repairs. Constant disintegration of government results 
in smaller and smaller appropriations for this needed work. 
The Chinese social system, stressing the family unit, has 
failed to develop a community spirit or to encourage codpera- 
tion of individuals outside the family, among families, villages, 
or districts. 


72 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


— 


In the few places where flood-prevention organizations 
exist, they are as devoid of public spirit as are the govern- 
ment authorities, being in fact semi-official in character. 
There is a typical example of the workings of such organiza- 
tions in the Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Conservancy 
Works of Kwangtung, a board which is to a large extent 
divorced from Chinese official influence. The opposition, 
which has so far been successful, to a permanent scheme of 
dike improvement near Canton emanates from the local 
dike committees, who found their positions jeopardized by 
the Board’s activities. These committees, who collect 
yearly from the farmers large sums of money supposed to 
be used for the maintenance of the dikes, deemed it contrary 
to their interests that a permanent scheme of improvement 
should be provided and financed by others than themselves— 
in this case by the Board. : 

A striking example of a disaster. due to official negligence 
is the Yellow River flood of 1925 in western Shantung. 
Under the old régime the conservancy of the Yellow River 
along its whole course was unified under the control of one 
man who reported directly to the Emperor. The annual 
appropriation for the upkeep of the river dikes was about 
three million dollars. Now this unified control is no longer 
continued, and each provincial governor is charged with 
the maintenance of the river within his territory. These 
governors, however, apply the public funds to the support 
of military establishments or to the waging of war on neigh- 
boring satraps. Appropriations for river conservancy grow 
smaller and smaller. The break in the main south dike 
occurred simply from lack of proper upkeep, for only a few 
tens of thousands of dollars can have been spent in 1924; 
and most of this must have gone for organization expenses, 
not for works. 

To the losses from failure to maintain the existing con- 
servancy works must be added the much greater loss from 
failure to undertake new works. Most of the schemes pro- 
posed by modern engineers are economically sound, and the 
new revenue which would result from them would soon 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 7k 





FIG. 45 


Fic. 44—Where the water of the old Shensi Irrigation Scheme divided. 
Fic. 45—The present main canal of the Shensi Irrigation Scheme. Built 
2000 years ago. 


74 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


cover the initial cost. Foreign nations, particularly the 
United States, have funds to loan for such productive enter- 
prises. But there is no stable government in China, and 
hence no security. The last loan of any importance for work 
of this kind to come from America was for the improvement 





Fic. 46—There is always migration of people during famine. These are 
refugees in Hunan. 


of the Grand Canal. A contract was signed with the Central 
Government. American engineers were employed to make 
a comprehensive survey of a scheme to prevent floods and 
improve transportation, and more than a million dollars was 
loaned by the American group. Not only have present condi- 
tions prevented consummation of the project, but the Gov- 
ernment has not even paid the interest on the sum already 
advanced. 

In the same way the development of China’s transporta- 
tion system, which would do much to prevent and relieve 
famines, is hindered solely by the unsatisfactory political 
condition of the country. Railway lines already in operation 
are rapidly going to ruin, for their revenue is appropriated 
by the military chieftains and no provision is made for 
upkeep. In times of serious conflicts, which occur now 
practically every year, the entire line is commandeered and 


POLITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 75 


moves no traffic except troops and supplies. This state of 
things may continue for weeks or months, and then the badly 
damaged rolling stock will again be put at the service of the 
public to provide revenue for the successful military leader. 
In some cases, where there are several military holders of 


5 etree: 





i Be 3 eae ‘ a 4 i oo pe . a 
Fic. 47—What chance for normal traffic when the stations are bl 
troop trains? 


ocked with 


a line, the revenues are divided, each general taking the 
receipts of the area under his direct control. 

In such circumstances it is not surprising that China has 
not paid even the interest on some of her railway loans, and 
that the amortization of others is delayed. No adequate 
extension of the railways can be expected while such condi- 
tions last. Improvement of rivers for navigation purposes, 
building of roads, and repair and extension of canals are 
all in the same category, and all await establishment of a 
stable government. 


BANDITRY 


Unsettled conditions in China always increase banditry, 
and bandits are not only nonproducers but actual destroyers 
of property. In areas subject to their raids the initiative of 
the people is tremendously crippled. Many rich districts 


76 CHINAS LAN DIOR FAMINE 


have been so overrun that the population has been forced 
to leave the land and take to the hills, where they can more 
easily protect themselves, or to seek new homes where 
security can be enjoyed. 

Most of the bandits in China at present are the defeated 
troops of the various military leaders. One day they will 
be so-called government forces; the next, if overpowered by 
some rival force, they will take to the hills, carrying their 
arms and what ammunition they can scrape together with 
them, thereafter to eke out an existence by carefully planned 
raids on the more fortunate dwellers on the plains. Not 
only do these marauding bands carry off everything of any 
intrinsic value, but they ofttimes burn the villages and 
towns, especially if the value of their loot is not considered 
to represent the true wealth of their victims. It is also 
customary to capture prominent citizens or their families 
and hold them for ransom. 

It is an interesting commentary on the people and on the 
times to note that, when bandits are successful in capturing 
some citizen of such importance as te give them a bargaining 
power with the government authorities, they invariably ask, 
not to be paid a large sum of money, but to be enrolled in the 
army of the faction that chances to be in power at the time. 
This would indicate that what they are chiefly concerned 
about is simply the assurance of sufficient food. They are 
not necessarily vicious but rather desperate people who, 
because of the political turmoil, have lost their means of 
support. They may have been enrolled in a distant province 
and, when they find their military chief defeated and their 
organization shattered, have no means of getting back to 
their homes, and the new régime is naturally unwilling 
to make a place for them. Banditry is almost their only 
recourse. Moreover, the oppressed farmers are occasionally 
reduced to banditry as the only means of insuring a bare 
subsistence, and thousands of the highwaymen in China 
at present would be self-respecting citizens in normal times. 
They have been driven to the hills and lawlessness by hunger 
and continued extortion; having been preyed upon almost 


POGIT LGA GAUSS Eo OF aA VLLN E: eh 


to death, they have chosen to reverse the rdle mainly at the 
expense of other unfortunates who have not their courage 
and will to live. 


ExcEss TROOPS 


As far as the civilian population is concerned the soldiery 
are not much better than the bandits. They live off the 





Fic. 48—A fortified point used as a refuge against bandits in the hill country of 
Shensi. 


country in which they are billeted. The only difference is 
that they belong, technically, to the government forces, and 
the supplies which they need are commandeered according 
to a more regular procedure. In the last analysis the hard- 
working peasant population foots the bill, whether at the 
point of a bandit’s gun or at the courteous behest of a mili- 
tary satrap. 

With conditions as they now are in China, the tremendous 
army maintained by the various provinces is probably drawn 
from surplus labor, and loss in production is not so great as 
would at first appear. However, other economic loss is 
sustained from this cause. According to the China Year 
Book, there were approximately 1,404,000 men in the various 


78 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


armies in 1924. Since that time there has been strenuous 
recruiting in many of the provinces, and, if the bandits 
also are included, it is probably no exaggeration to say that 
there are now no less than two million men under arms. It 
is estimated that the cost of maintaining a soldier is about 
$200 a year. But the estimate of the living standard given 
in a former chapter allows the average family of five members 
only $150, and this, according to available statistics, is more 
than is actually spent. Assuming that the proportion of the 
$150 consumed by an adult is about $40, it costs five times 
as much to keep a man in the army as it does at home; and 
the loss to the country, even if we place the number of troops 
at the conservative figure of 1,500,000 and assume that all 
the men are normally unproductive, would reach $240,000,000 
annually. This does not include the loss of revenue on the 
railways from free transportation of men and_ supplies. 
Neither does it include the immense sums spent for ammuni- 
tion, artillery, airplanes, and other auxiliary equipment. 

But while the soldiers are recruited from surplus labor, 
the animals used for the transport of ammunition and 
supplies, to draw the guns, and to serve as mounts for the 
officers and cavalry are taken from production, for there 
is no surplus of domestic animals corresponding to the 
surplus of population. This item entails a loss in addition 
to the cost of feeding the animals, depending upon the season 
when they are impressed; for it is not the custom to maintain 
ammunition and supply trains constantly but to commandeer 
carts when needed. If a campaign begins in the plowing 
season, it causes greater hardship to the people than in the 
slack of the year. But even then it is customary to work 
the animals either for grinding, to pump water for irrigation, 
or for cartage. 

One of the contributory causes of the famine in 1925 in cen- 
tral China was the civil strife between Kweichow and Szech- 
wan. The Kweichow troops invaded southern Szechwan and 
after some fighting were driven out. When they left they took 
with them all available beasts of burden, loaded with grain. 
The Szechwan troops who replaced them brought very 


POFIMIGAIS GAWSES OF BANMINE 79 


little in the way of supplies and forthwith appropriated the 
remainder of the food reserves of the district—leaving the 
population, who had no interest in either side, to starve. 


HEAVY TAXATION BY UNSCRUPULOUS OFFICIALS 


There is no doubt that this great drain on the resources 
of the country tends to increase the frequency and severity 
of famine distress. The heavy taxes imposed by the mil1- 
tarists to keep up their establishments tend to increase 
prices, and this in turn makes living more difficult for the 
poorer classes, although the taxes may be collected from their 
more fortunate brethren. 

Many of the methods employed by military leaders to 
collect revenues are of a nature to upset the economic equl- 
librium and restrict trade and, in some instances, to affect 
vitally the well-being of the individual. In the first category 
may be named the appropriation of the revenues of the rail- 
ways, which has already been mentioned. In this class 
may be counted also the likin, or transit taxes, imposed at 
frequent intervals along the main routes of commerce and 
reaching such proportions as to stifle trade. This is one 
of the reasons that makes German porcelain cheaper than 
Kiangsi porcelain in Peking, in spite of its much higher 
production cost. The German product is imported through 
Tientsin and is liable to only two regular taxes, the import 
duty and the octroi tax on entering Peking; whereas porcelain 
from Kiangsi Province, in traveling a distance of only eight 
or nine hundred miles through interior China, may be subject 
to as many as sixty different imposts en route, depending in 
both number and amount almost solely on the whim of the 
war lords through whose areas the product has to pass. 

It is customary to tax rice exported from some provinces 
on the plea of a poor harvest and the need for retaining all 
available supplies for local use. But actually this is done 
many times simply as a means for increasing the revenue 
of the local chieftain. The effect is to make the movement 
of grain difficult and to prevent needy provinces from re- 


80 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


ceiving the surplus of neighboring districts except at exorbi- 
tant prices. Such a condition existed in the provinces of 
central China in 1925, and the price of rice rose to unprec- 
edented heights in many centers. This was another of the 
contributing causes of the famine distress in this region. 


THE OPIUM TRAFFIC 


A still greater evil perpetrated for similar purposes is the 
wholesale engagement of officials in the growth, transporta- 
tion, and sale of opium. In many provinces the greatest 
source of income is from opium. In order to “prevent”’ 
the growing of the poppy from which opium is derived it 
is the custom to impose an opium tax on the farmers. Every 
acre of poppy is taxed with the declared purpose of making 
it difficult for the farmers to raise this crop. However, the 
tax is not imposed on the acreage actually under cultivation 
for poppy raising but on the land known to be suitable for 
this purpose. The tax is so high that the farmer is unable 
to raise any other crop but opium, while the revenue from 
this product is sufficient not only to pay the tax but also 
to leave a handsome profit. Naturally the farmer raises 
the poppy, and the “governor’’ suavely protests that he 
is doing his best to curb the evil. The transportation of 
opium from one province to another and its sale are also 
often so arranged as to leave a profit in the hands of the 
officials. License fees for opium dens and houses of ill- 
repute serve to swell the total emoluments from this source. 

A glaring example of official rapacity and oppression 
occurred in Fukien Province a few years ago. Hearing that 
some opium suppression mission was on its way to his area, 
a local chieftain hurriedly called in the collection of the 
opium tax two years in advance and then ordered the destruc- 
tion of the crops. 

It is not only the injurious effect of the opium habit— 
a remote cause of famine in itself—that most seriously con- 
‘cerns us but also the growth of the poppy on rich grain 
lands, which very materially decreases the food supply of 


POEITICAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 8I 





F1G. 50 


Fic. 49—Dry rice fields; the crop a total failure. Tax remittance and other 


government aid were formerly given in time of famine. 
Frc. 50—Opium poppies cn grain land. Good government could prevent 


opium growing. 


82 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


the country. This was a third contributing cause of the 
famine in central China in 1925. 


(GOVERNMENT ACTION NEEDED TO RELIEVE OVERCROWDING 


From Chinese origins the general trend of migration of the 
people seems to have been ina southerly rather than a norther- 
ly direction. According to archeological authority the Chinese 
who first achieved political and cultural solidarity resided 
along the middle reaches of the Yellow River. With the 
passage of time they made their way down the valley and 
turned southward until the southern part of China was 
settled, while from the southern coast there was eventually 
a movement overseas. Rich and fertile lands in Mongolia 
and Manchuria have been left aside and even now are sparsely 
populated. Whatever the reasons in the past there would 
seem little excuse for such neglect under present conditions 
of overpopulation. Among the contributing causes must be 
included the failure of the government to protect the colonizers 
against the inroads of the wild Mongolian tribes, as well as 
from the Chinese bandits with which the sparsely populated 
districts in the North are cursed. 

The government has failed to provide means forcibly 
to move the excess of population from overcrowded regions 
in normal times and give them sufficient support and protec- 
tion so that they might get a foothold in the new country; 
or even in times of famine to utilize the relief funds in directing 
and assisting the starving wanderers to a place where they 
could eventually support themselves. 

But, while no adequate government-organized and sup- 
ported effort has been made to colonize the North and North- 
west, there is in progress a slow but steady movement of 
the population of the northern provinces of China proper 
in that direction. However, it is not fast enough to have 
any appreciable effect on the congestion of the plains, for 
the places of the few who move out are soon filled. Tt would 
take a comprehensive and well arranged plan to achieve 


*8 See for instance C. W. Bishop: The Geographical Factor in the Development 
ot Chinese Civilization, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 12, 1922, pp. 19-4T. 


LOCELICALAGAUSES OF PANNE 83 


success. Such a scheme could be carried out only by the 
government, for the people would move only under real pres- 
sure, and the officials up to the present time have not had the 
authority nor the resources nor the desire to bring it to 
fruition. 

It is interesting to note that a cause of the lack of initia- 
tive which might induce the residents of the overcrowded, 
famine-threatened northern provinces to seek better oppor- 
tunities may be traceable to the effects on the race of former 
oft-repeated starvation conditions. Professor Ellsworth 
Huntington in his recent book “The Character of Races,” 
in comparing the home-loving, conservative, slow-to-act 
natives of the northern provinces of China to the radical, 
progressive, adventurous southerners, ascribes the difference 
to the selective effect of famines on successive generations. 
These northern families, he thinks, have developed habits 
of thrift and economy until the acquisitive instinct has be- 
come second nature, for the wasteful and extravagant have 
long since been eliminated during the many years of want. 
These characteristics are the natural counterpart of con- 
servatism, a desire to keep at all costs what has been acquired, 
and they tend to make abhorrent the thought of leaving home 
and giving up a plot of land, however meager and inadequate 
to support a growing family. 





Fic. 51—Many dikes form natural roadways suitable for motor traffic 


(Cla b eed inane UA 
SOGTAIZ GAUSESs OL SteAVUEN FE 


In the last analysis the principal cause of most famines 
in China, which it must be remembered is an agricultural 
country, is a density of population greater than the land is 
able to support. It may be well to examine this vexed 
question of population in some detail. | 


CHINESE POPULATION STATISTICS 


As with most fundamental information in China, all argu- 
ments based on population must remain unsupported by 
exact figures. To quote Mr. H. B. Elliston of the Chinese 
Government Bureau of Economic Information: 

Were it not for the fact that there is a lack cf statistical data on both 
production and population in China, it might be possible to assess this 
problem of population in more definitive terms. But’as Dr. Arthur Smith 
in reply to a newspaper request for the ‘bottom facts’”’ of a Chinese situa- 
tion once said, there is no bottom in China, and no facts. One can only 
speak from an experience of the country which, no matter how long the 
residence or how observant the mind, can at the best be merely a cursory 
survey. Such is the magnitude of China. 


There is no official census of persons, and unofficial estimates 
of China’s population vary within wide limits. The Manchus 
issued population statistics in 1651, but these were on the 
basis of tax-paying households, not individuals. According 
to these figures there were 10,633,326 households in China 
at that time. In 1734, according to Professor E. H. Parker’s 
‘“‘China: Past and Present,’ there were 26,500,000 house- 
holds in all China. If we allow five souls to a household, 


84 


SOCIATACA USE SeOR AMINE 85 


this would give us a total population of 130,000,000. ‘Two 
years after, in 1736, the great Ch’ien Lung came to the 
throne, ruling for sixty years, expanding and consolidating 
the Manchu régime. He devised a more intelligent system than 
that based on tax-paying households. From 1741 to 1851 
this system gave a year-by-year tabulation of population, 
showing a steadily mounting return of souls, beginning with 
143,411,559 and ending with the maximum of 432,164,047." 
Professor Parker goes on to say that the population of China 
cannot at any time have much exceeded 100,000,000 until 
the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the year 1762 
it had over-topped 200,000,000, doubling itself during the next 
century. This is a slower rate of increase than the present 
average for the world. G.H. Knibbs, in his “* Mathematical 
Theory of Population,” published by the Australian Govern- 
ment, gives I1,649,000,000, with a rate of increase of 1.159— 
that is, doubling in 60.15 years. Even if the Manchus followed 
the statistical method known to the West, which may 
be doubted, they did not maintain it; nor has the Republic 
taken the trouble to obtain any accurate census of the Chinese 
people. The last purely Chinese census was undertaken in 
1910 and gives 327,079,000. Two estimates are commonly 
quoted by yearbooks and directories—one, an estimate 
by the foreign-supervised Maritime Customs, and the other 
by the Post Office. For 1924 these figures were: Post Office 
estimate, 436,094,953; Maritime Customs estimate, 444,653,- 
000. It is even difficult to compare them, as they do not em- 
brace all the territory claimed to be under Chinese suzerainty. 

In a recent discussion of China’s population problem 
Professor Roxby of the University of Liverpool compares 
the Post Office census of 1920 with the China Continuation 
Committee’s survey of 1917-1918." The respective figures 
are 427,679,000, 440,925,000. In both instances the popula- 
tion is exclusive of Inner and Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang 


4. H. Parker: China: Past and Present, London, 1903, p. 27. 

% P, M. Roxby: The Distribution of Population in China: Economic and Political 
Significance, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 15, 1925, pp. I-24. The China Continuation Committee 
published their results in a volume entitled ‘‘The Christian Occupation of China,”’ 
Shanghai, 1922. Figs. 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 are from this volume. 


86 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


and Tibet with Kokonor but is inclusive of Manchuria. The 
compilers of the China Continuation Committee were in- 
clined to consider their estimate as too high. 


POPULATION FIGURE ARBITRARY 


It will readily be seen from the above data that the writer 
on China has to choose from many conflicting estimates and 
in the end has to fall back on a more or less arbitrary figure. 
What shall that figure be? Judging from the Manchu 
estimates up to the middle of the last century and bearing 
in mind the rate of progression of Chinese population, it 
would seem that the Maritime Customs and Post Office 
are too conservative. But several factors have operated in 
the last seventy years against the natural increase. The 
great Taiping Rebellion (1856-1860) is said to have more 
than decimated the population. Then there were the terrible 
famine in northern China of 1877—1878, the Mohammedan 
Rebellion in western China in 1861-1862, and other retarding 
influences. These factors, coupled with the natural facility 
of the Chinese for talking in round numbers, have caused 
many authorities, the most notable being the late W. W. Rock- 
hill, former United States Minister to China, to depreciate 
the usual estimate of China’s population as 400,000,000.?° 
The writer, however, is inclined to consider that figure as, 
if anything, below the actual, having seen many evidences of 
the remarkable recuperative power of the Chinese and its 
effect in the multiplication of the species. Truly, the people 
in the interior of China live in layers, fitted into the most 
miserable shacks it has been the writer’s misfortune to see. 

Fifty years ago the islands that dot the West Lake in the 
province of Chihli supported very few people, according 
to old records and the statements of old residents. Today 
they are teeming with life. On one island, half a square 
mile in area, Ch’uantou, the writer was informed by a Salva- 


°6W. W. Rockhill: Inquiry into the Population of China, Smithsonian Misc. 
Colls., Vol. 47, 1904, pp. 303-321, and idem: The 1o10 Census of the Population of 
China, Bull, Amer. Geogr. Soc., Vol. 44, 1912, pp. 668-673. 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 87 


tion Army resident missionary that there were over seven 
hundred families. This is still the usual way in China of 
computing population; and at the number of persons to a 
family we have previously allowed, this would mean 4000 
souls, or 8000 to the square mile! In this particular case 
there was no economic reason for the congestion of popula- 
tion. The people all eked out a sparse subsistence from the 
fish in the lake, buying their grain mostly in exchange for 
lake products and matting made from lakeside reeds. Here 
is a vivid illustration of Edwin Markham’s “twin brother 
to the ox.” 

Thus the problem, in so far as it can be dealt with statis- 
tically. Personal observation shows that the fecundity of 
the Chinese is without parallel. It was vividly brought to 
the notice of a friend of the writer, newly-arrived in the Orient. 
He employed six servants in his modest establishment at a 
total monthly cost in actual wages (which it must be allowed 
is not the only reckoning in this land of ‘“‘squeeze’’) of about 
forty dollars, United States currency. One day he asked his 
‘boy’ if he was:married. ‘“‘Yes,’’ he replied, “and I have 
six children.’’ Amazed that such a young man should have 
a family of six and more amazed that he could support them 
on his meager wages, my friend continued his inquiries and 
found that no fewer than thirty-two persons were being 
supported by him through his six servants. 


Hicu BirtH RATE IN CHINA 


In spite of the tremendously high death rate, particularly 
of infants, due to lack of modern medical knowledge, in 
spite of the depopulating effect of terrible famines, and in 
spite of the immense loss of life caused by civil wars we find 
today a denser population on the plains than ever before; 
and since there has been no appreciable influx from other 
countries we must ascribe the present conditions to the 
excessively high birth rate. 

Reasons are not far to seek. In the first place, a study of 
the comparative birth rate of various classes in other coun- 


88 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


tries shows that it is the uneducated, laboring population 
that is the most prolific. Since the professional classes are 
but an infinitesimal part of the total population, this fact 
alone would have a large bearing on the situation. But it 
is necessary to look deeper for the cause of the present condi- 
tions in the Orient, for even the casual foreign observer who 
resides in China is impressed with the large families of those 
who occupy the highest places both in official and intellectual 
circles. Leaders of modern Chinese thought who have spent 
years in the West and who have been educated in foreign 
universities return to their homeland to raise families limited 
in size only by the physical fitness of the parents. So it 
is very evident that there is some compelling force making 
for reproduction—a force superior to the dire effects of 
overpopulation and the pitiful economic poverty of the great 
masses. 


EFFECT OF ANCESTOR WORSHIP ON THE BIRTH RATE 


This force is the necessity of providing sufficient male 
children so that, in spite of the ravages of disease, accident, 
wars, pestilence, or famine, at least one will survive to carry 
on the family name and perform the necessary duties required 
by ancestor worship—the universal religion of the country. 
No one not intimately acquainted with China realizes how 
deeply rooted in the individual Chinese is the Confucian 
doctrine of worshiping those who have gone before. An 
elaborate ritual has grown up through the ages around this 
practice; and it is only the male descendants who are qualified 
to perform the necessary rites. One would gather from some 
writers that China is a land without spirituality and without 
an effective religion. Nothing could be further from the 
truth. In spite of the fact that there are in China more 
than 8000 foreign missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, 
and that many tens of millions of dollars are expended an- 
nually in mission work, Christianity has had little effect in 
changing the outlook of the Chinese upon life and its origin. 
Chinese views are grounded in a vast imaginative cosmogony, 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 89 





Fic. 53 





FIG. 54 


Fic. 52—Sometimes the flood waters contain fish and help eke out the food 
supply. 
Fic. 53—Countryside in the flooded area in Chihli months after the high-water 


season, covered by a vast sheet of ice. 
Fic. 54—Fishing through the ice in a flooded region in northern China. 


go CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


distinctly Oriental and steeped in mysticism. China’s 
aversion to Christianity is the expression not of a lack of 
religion but of a natural repugnance to another code diametri- 
cally opposed to its own. A concrete example of the hold which 
ancestor worship has on the people is the case of the cathedral 
congregation of a large mission in central China who impor- 
tuned the bishop to grant permission for the erection of 
ancestral tablets in the church. This was accorded, and many 
tablets are now installed, but the spirit which prompted their 
erection was far deeper than the wish merely to preserve the 
memory of some loved one, which is the guiding motive in the 
West. 

The failure to reach the Chinese on the spiritual side has 
resulted in the diversion of many mission enterprises to 
industrial, educational, and hospital work: and it has been 
difficult for the masses of the people with their poverty, love 
of education, and need for medical attention, to decline this 
assistance. But the acceptance of such help should not be 
regarded as an indication that the traditional hostility to 
foreign beliefs has been relaxed. 


OLD-AGE INSURANCE 


Another cogent reason for the wish to have large families 
is to provide support for the parents’ declining years. This 
is the old-age insurance policy of the Chinese. In the poorer 
classes especially many children are desired, particularly 
males, in order that at least one or two of them may live to 
maturity and care for their parents when the latter are no 
longer able to make a living. The feeling of obligation of 
a child toward its parents is so much a part of the character 
of the individual Chinese that it is only in exceptional cases 
that a son fails to put first the interests of his father and moth- 
er and even of his older brother. There are few opportunities 
for saving, especially in the villages; and this procedure 
furnishes the best possible assurance for declining years. Its 
weakness lies in the fact that probably a greater sum is ex- 
pended in rearing a large family than is returned to the parents 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF -FAMINE QI 


in their old age. Many children are supported who die before 
productive years; and the effort to raise sons results in at 
least an equal number of daughters, who are regarded as a 
total loss. 

When a married pair have no children of their own it is 
customary for them to adopt or purchase male infants, a 
practice followed not only by the well-to-do but also by the 
poorer classes. Widows do not often remarry in China, 
and, if left childless, even they will undertake the support 
of an adopted son as a means of insurance. 


EARLY MARRIAGE AND CONCUBINAGE 


A custom which results in large families is early marriage. 
It is usual in China for marriages to be arranged by the par- 
ents of the bride and groom, often while they are still infants. 
Since they have no part in the selection of their mates, there 
is no reason why they should wait until maturity before they 
marry. Sometimes the contracting parties are scarcely more 
than children, but usually, especially among the poorer classes, 
the wedding does not occur until the groom is in a position to 
support his wife. As is the case with so many other subjects 
in China, there are no accurate marriage statistics, but general 
opinion agrees that the marrying age is less there than in 
occidental countries. 

The practice of taking secondary wives undoubtedly has 
the effect of increasing the birth rate to the extent that it 
provides husbands for girls who might not otherwise marry. 
This factor is probably not an important one in China, how- 
ever, for the population statistics of the Famine Commis- 
sion’s rural survey show that there is an excess of males 
under the age of fifty. There is no evidence to show that 
China differs from other countries where female births 
exceed the males, but it is undoubtedly true that female 
infants do not get the careful attention in China accorded 
to male, and there is probably a much heavier mortality 
among women in the first years of early marriage than there 
is in the West. The increase in birth rate due to the custom 


Q2 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


of concubinage is probably offset by the decrease which fol- 
lows from the fact that widows do not remarry as in the West. 


PRUGALITV, OF THES CHINESE 


The Chinese are justly recognized to be a frugal people. 
The foreigner, and particularly the American, is tremendously 
impressed with the extremely efficient utilization of the mate- 
rial necessities which reach the hands of the people. The 
reason why the great natural resources of the country are not 
being better exploited is another matter. But with a given 
amount of material for the needs of food, clothing, and 
shelter, surely no other people can compare with the Chinese 
in the use they can get out of it. Take, for instance, shoes, 
which are made by the women of the household. A good 
pair of soles is purchased of a size to fit the largest pair of 
feet in the family, usually the father’s. Cloth tops for them 
are then made from old cast-off garments. When the soles 
wear out around the edges they are cut down and used for 
making a new pair of shoes for the next largest pair of feet, 
and so on until the soles are entirely worn out or until they 
have been cut down to fit the baby.. Then what is left of 
them is exchanged with the ragpicker for matches. 

The Standard Oil Company sells kerosene oil in five-gallon 
tins. When they are empty they go to the tinsmith and are 
converted into dustpans and other useful household articles. 
Tin cans and even cigarette packages may be found at the 
fairs, disguised as toys. Absolutely nothing is wasted. The 
writer can recall having seen a rickshaw man wearing an 
abbreviated lady’s jacket of the sort popular in New York 
in the early nineties and a cast-off ‘‘stove-pipe”’ hat, not in 
too bad condition—surely a ludicrous sight. But his ap- 
pearance excited no comment from the passers-by. The 
coat was still warm and serviceable; and the hat, although 
not ideally suited to the wearer’s use, was certainly better 
than none at all. 

There is no doubt that too frugal habits and too niggardly 
a view of life are deterrent to progress. It is not so much 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 93 


that they foster ‘‘penny wise and pound foolish” practices, 
but they sap the initiative of the people. In their concen- 
tration on conserving the resources within their grasp, they 
ofttimes lose sight of the opportunity to increase their 
assets. There are many reasons why China is so poverty- 





Fic. 55—One of the most wasteful ceremonies is funerals. (Photograph 
Hartung.) 


ia 


by 


stricken despite her potential wealth, but not the least 
among them is the penurious outlook on life which prevents 
the individual from viewing the problems of his family and 
his country in the light of the tremendous possibilities of 
the future instead of the discouraging limitations of the 
present. 


WASTE DUE TO CEREMONIES AND FEASTS 


But this habit of economy is cast aside at frequent intervals, 
and a perfect orgy of wastefulness is indulged in for a brief 
season. The occasion for such lapses is found in the practice 
of celebrating some ceremony, most often a funeral, a birth- 
day, a wedding, or some other event which vitally affects 
the family. The amount of money devoted to such purposes 
is quite likely out of all proportion to the income of the 


94 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


family. A birthday celebration, for instance, may start 
in the morning, last all day, and extend far into the night; 
theatricals are provided and a huge feast at a cost of hundreds 
and often thousands of dollars. Such entertainments, es- 
pecially funerals, involve the burning of much paraphernalia— 
‘money’? made of tinfoil, imitation automobiles, sedan 
chairs, paper concubines and horses, and other articles which 
may be an assistance or a pleasure to the dead man when he 
arrives at his celestial home. Again, the Chinese being intense- 
ly superstitious may waste the savings of years in an orgy or 
feast on the occasion of an impending crack of doom, foretold 
from time to time as about to happen on a certain date. 

One of the worst features of the practice of holding such 
elaborate ceremonies is the tendency to contract debt 
thereby. It is the families so handicapped that are the 
first to go under on the advent of disaster, for not only are 
their savings gone but even their credit is destroyed. 

It is not alone the rich who indulge in these wasteful 
practices, but people of all classes; and the sums spent by 
the poor, while comparatively smaller, cause the greater 
distress. Vast amounts are frittered away every year in 
America, but the effect is not to impoverish the people to 
anything like the extent that a smaller waste produces in 
China. The proportion of income devoted to such uses in 
China will probably reach a much higher figure than abroad, 
notwithstanding the great difference in the standard of living, 
and this is the factor that counts. 

The frequent feasts given in conjunction with official 
functions also add to the unnecessary depletion of the na- 
tion’s food supply. These feasts are composed of numerous 
dishes, any one of which should be sufficient for an adequate 
meal for the average family. Occasionally as many as a 
hundred courses are served. The requirements for even a 
modest feast offered to a company of ten or at most twelve 
persons include: four cold dishes, six hot dishes, four ‘‘ big’”’ 
courses, two kinds of dessert, four varieties of fruit, four 
varieties of preserves, four kinds of dry nuts or nut candy. 
Rice of course, is indispensable; so is steamed bread. 


SOGIALTAGA USES 7O Bab ANENE 95 


During the various festivals and at civil ceremonies when 
friends get together and make merry, as many as fifty toa 
hundred feasts may be given at one place at the same time. 
The Chinese say that this social usage is so strong that for 
the leading members of a community to discontinue the 
practice of feast giving would be as hard as the elimination 
of rice from their diet. 

A minor source of waste, mentioned by the writer simply 
because it has been impressed upon him in his relief work, 
is the great number of dogs—in the rural districts one or 
more to each household. Obviously they are intended asa 
protection against robbers and as scavengers, but these 
ends could be served with but a small part of the present 
numbers. If kept simply as pets, they are indeed an expensive 
luxury; for in the course of a year they consume an appreciable 
quantity of food, though by this it should not be inferred 
that they are well fed. Probably a leaner, fiercer, more 
pitifully neglected collection of dogs is not to be found any- 
where in the world. ‘Their condition serves to show how 
little surplus there is in a Chinese village for non-essentials; 
surely the maintenance of non-productive animals is a drain 
on the community that is particularly felt in the lean years. 


WASTE DUE TO OVEREATING 


There is a general feeling among intelligent Chinese that 
a tremendous waste occurs each year from overeating. While 
people in one district are on the verge of starvation from 
poor crops, the residents of other districts where the harvest 
has been bountiful are eating more food than they need or 
can possibly digest. It is common opinion that the food 
consumption of the farming people is determined by the 
quantity of grain possessed by the family against the next 
harvest. Mr. Y. S. Djang, who is the foremost Chinese 
famine-relief administrator of the modern type, after an 
inquiry into this subject said: 

In districts where the crops are reliable and abundant the rural popula- 
tion consumes more food than even their arduous labor requires. For 


96 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


instance, in eastern Chekiang, in the rice fields of Shaohsing, the farmers 
eat as much as three bowls of rice three times daily. Each bowl is in reality 
two bowls, for the content of one is placed on the top of that of another, 
and they count this ‘double strength’? quantity as one. Supposing that 
each bowl contains one catty, the total which each individual eats every 
day is nine catties, or twelve pounds. In its dry state, this amount of 
rice weighs four pounds. Half of this quantity would certainly suffice 
even for an adult doing hard manual work. 

The food consumed is only partially utilized when ejected from the 
human system, and the high fertilizing value of the human manure cast 
off by these people is well recognized. To induce the patronage of public 
latrines, the farmers build and maintain fairly elaborate outhouses in the 
country, providing toilet necessities. 

In this particular section of eastern Chekiang mentioned above, the 
people consume all their soil will produce. Even in the best years when the 
crops are especially plentiful, I learned from the farmers that they never 
sell their produce in any quantity to outside buyers. 


WASTE OF TIME 


It is perhaps strange that the remarkable frugality in 
expenditure of the material things of life does not extend 
also to a saving of that greatest of all resources, time. Surely 
there are few places in the world where time means less to 
people than in China. The slogan of the West, “Time is 
money,’’ not only strikes no responsive chord in the breast 
of the average Chinese but offends, in a sense, his idea of 
the dignity befitting a man of intelligence. The writer is of the 
opinion that there is a natural reason for this phenomenon, 
as there is for many of the other characteristics of the people. 
This reason, however, can scarcely be ascribed to climate. 
The climate in northern China, particularly—and it is here 
that the people are especially slow—is most invigorating. 
Neither can it be ascribed to laziness; for the Chinese, given 
a task, are exceptionally diligent, and the amount of work 
which an individual is capable of accomplishing, if put to 
it, is truly amazing. 

The author believes that this attitude is the direct result 
of the overcrowding on the land. For every piece of work 
there are several workers. This situation applied to laborers 
who work for a wage undoubtedly tends to increase efficiency, 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 97 


but most of the labor in China is on the land; and for a given 
plot of ground belonging to or farmed by a family there are 
usually more workers than are needed. Moreover, the 
Chinese have so niched themselves into their places in the 
social and economic scale that they refuse to perform tasks, 
even minor tasks, that lie outside their daily round. Even 
if a minor job is accessory to and fits in with his own, a worker 
will shrug his shoulders and utter the Chinese equivalent to 
the widely known version in pidgin English, ‘‘No_ b’long 
my pidgin.”’ This is the Oriental expression for the principle 
of one man, one job—the principle well known to Western 
trade unionism; and in China there is no doubt that, in con- 
junction with a certain amount of “‘soidiering on the job,” 
it helps the maximum number to maintain employment. 

And centuries of this condition have had their effect in 
slowing up the individual. There is a singular contrast in 
the atmosphere of a Japanese and a Chinese village. Japan 
has an air of bustle entirely lacking in China. Not only 
the men but also the women are constantly engaged in some 
useful occupation which serves to increase their income. 
The shopkeeper does not sit idly waiting for the next cus- 
tomer; and the women of the household, if not employed 
about their housekeeping duties, are engaged in some in- 
dustry that adds to the family funds. In China the tre- 
mendous labor wastage keeps down production to a point 
where it has an important effect even on the number and 
severity of famines. Not only does it decrease the possible 
supply of foodstuffs, but it diminishes the creation of products 
which might be exchanged in other countries for food. 

This waste of time was forced upon the writer’s attention 
as he was making a trip through the part of interior China 
devastated by the Mohammedan Rebellion. Many of the 
villages over a wide area are totally ruined, and in others 
a large proportion of the houses are wrecked and only some 
few of them have been repaired, at least sufficiently to 
afford shelter. The writer was astonished to find that this 
destruction was wrought sixty-five years ago. In all this 
time the countryside has not been restored, and the blackened 


98 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


ruins yet stand as they were left two generations ago. To 
be sure, many of the former inhabitants were massacred; 
but some were left, and others have since filled their places; 
and all have made their homes amid the ruins with never 
a thought of cleaning up and rebuilding the old abodes in 
spite of the weeks and months of leisure during the winter 
season. Contrast this condition with the rebuilding of the 
devastated regions in the southern United States after 
the Civil War, which took place simultaneously with the 
Mohammedan Rebellion in China; or compare it with the 
rehabilitation of the much more completely destroyed sec- 
tions of Europe since the close of the World War in 1918, 
and some idea of the backwardness of the people of interior 
China may be envisaged. 


Foot BINDING 


Another great form of labor wastage is to be found in the 
custom of foot binding. Although some progress has been 
made in eradicating this self-inflicted crippling of the female 
population, it is only in a few places that any proportion of 
the women are free from this curse. In the interior the writer 
has traveled for days without seeing a single woman or girl 
with normal feet. Many of the women labor in the fields in 
spite of their infirmity, and it is surprising that they are 
able to do so at all; but the amount of work which even the 
most active can accomplish is comparatively small especially 
in occupations which require walking or standing. 


LAND USED FOR GRAVES AND HOME BURIAL 


A social custom having a direct bearing on the production 
of food is that of setting apart immense areas for burial of 
the dead. The most thickly populated regions where the 
land is good and where it is most needed for agriculture are, 
unfortunately, just the districts where graves are most 
numerous. In many cases the mounds reach an enormous 
size. The well-to-do often surround the family graves with 
trees which prevents the use of the land for crop-growing 


SOCIAL. CAUSES OF FAMINE 99 





Fic. 56—The well-to-do surround the family graves with trees, taking land 


almost permanently out of production. 
Fic. 57—Some grave mounds reach an enormous size. 


Fic. 58—Miles of grave mounds covering good grain land. 


100 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


for many years, perhaps permanently. Graves made in 
open fields are more apt to be plowed up after a few genera- 
tions when the elements have done their work of erosion 
and the outlines of the mounds have been lost. 

There are no dependable statistics from which an exact 
estimate of the area of burial grounds can be made. It is 
probably no exaggeration to say, however, that not less 
than five per cent of the cultivable land in the densely popu- 
lated provinces is at present devoted to this purpose. 

At the overthrow of every dynasty there has been a 
tendency to plow up the old graves. This has not usually 
been actively urged by the new régime but has been carried 
out with at least the tacit consent of the officials, and the 
result has been to reduce the cemetery acreage from the 
proportions it would otherwise have reached. 

In Japan, it may be observed, cremation is extensively prac- 
ticed. In China the practice is followed only by Buddhists 
and is at present an expensive custom. 

The necessity of being buried at the old home is a real 
one with the people of China. No matter how far afield a 
man may go during his lifetime, if he dies away from home 
his body must be brought back even though an ocean voyage 
is necessary. This custom coupled with that of ancestor 
worship furnishes an almost indissoluble tie to the particular 
plot of ground which has marked the abode of the family 
for generations, no matter how greatly its members may have 
increased in numbers, nor how great may have been the 
decrease in the fertility of the soil, nor how seriously the 
dependability of the crops may have been affected by the 
changing forces of nature through the ages. “Who will 
look after the graves of our ancestors?” is the question in- 
variably asked when emigration is suggested as a source of 
relief. 


CONSERVATISM OF THE PEOPLE 


For several thousand years the life and customs of the 
people have been stamped in the same mold. Before the 
time of Confucius even, social usages and manners of life 


SOCIAL ECAUSES OF FAMINE IOI 


and conduct had been formed. As a matter of fact, it was 
Confucius’ declared task to enjoin the people to follow in 
the footsteps of the ancients in this respect. He regarded 
himself not as the originator of a new social order but rather 
as an agent for classifying and interpreting the already 
existing codes laid down as the rule and guide for the con- 
duct of future generations. Thus it is that the people of 
China are a backward-looking rather than a forward-looking 
race, and for this reason the introduction of modern ideas 
and practices is extremely difficult. When China achieved 
cultural and political solidarity her religion, social customs, 
and everyday manner of life were codified and became the 
immutable pattern for future ages. A change from former 
practices would indirectly imply a lack of confidence in the 
accepted usages laid down by those who had gone before, 
who are worshiped as the family divinities, and would 
hardly be countenanced. 

It is surprising what power the simple word custom has 
in settling an argument. Foreigners often find it difficult 
to deal with servants and particularly with rickshaw men, 
who always demand far more than the market rate for their 
services. The writer has found that the simple statement 
“Tt is not my custom to give more”’ is the most effective 
method of dealing with such a situation: in almost all cases 
it closes the discussion. 


CONSERVATISM DELAYS INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 


It is only since the development of machinery in the 
West that China has been passed in the march of material 
progress and fallen into the category of a backward country. 
Considering the splendid start which China had on the rest 
of the world, it is, at first glance, surprising that she did not 
herself learn to harness steam and electricity for the good of 
mankind. Why with the mental equipment possessed by 
the educated Chinese did they not develop a John Watt 
or a Thomas Edison? Those who have given the matter 
study are forced to conclude that it is because the value of 


102 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 





Fic. 60 


Fic. 59—-Primitive power in China. A Chinese pumping plant. 
Fic. 60—The native method of lifting water for irrigation. 


SOCIAL CAUSES OF FAMINE 103 





FIG. 62 


Fic. 61—In northern China donkeys carry much of the freight. 
Fic. 62—In western China most of the travel is by chair. 


104 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


change and progress has not been recognized, that there is 
no urge to experiment; the desire to do things in a more 
expeditious or more efficient way has not, in this most 
conservative country of the conservative East, been present 
until recently. This is quite understandable when one 
bears in mind the pervading quietist philosophy, the domina- 
tion of established social customs and practices, and the 
restriction of outlook under the terrible stress of supporting 
life. 

Education until twenty years ago followed a strict and 
age-worn standard, and the only path to intellectual honors 
was through an intimate knowledge of the classics dating 
back at least two millennia. Applied science was not in- 
cluded in the curriculum, and all the emphasis was placed 
on the philosophical side of learning. As some one has aptly 
said, “China enjoys an aristocracy of civilization.’”’ The 
democratization of civilization there must await the im- 
provement of the condition of the vast peasant population. 


NONCOGOPERATION OF THE CHINESE 


The family system has greatly hindered co6peration 
among the people. Individualism, or rather clannishness, 
is probably another factor. Clan selfishness has become a 
national trait through the fierce struggle for existence. A 
limited conception of the power of united effort in these days 
of huge combinations of capital, and of organized endeavor 
in business and in politics is one of the chief things that 
prevents China from successfully adopting Western institu- 
tions. A number of experiments have been made, but only a 
few have had any measure of success. The great difficulty 
has been with the management of the undertaking, and 
most of the failures have been due to lack of what in the 
West would be called integrity. The managing director does 
not always abscond with the funds of the concern, although 
this sometimes happens. More usually he gets the affairs 
of the company entangled with his private interests. His 
family, as soon as his appointment is announced, saddles 


SOCGL Aa USE SEO EL Sh ANNE 105 


him with its unemployed members, and he reorganizes the 
business to give place on the staff for his relatives. Inci- 
dentally, greater efficiency is probably possible under this 
plan, for individuals do not work well together unless there 
are family ties. The great danger is that the director will 
load up the business with a much larger staff than is necessary 
or supportable. Probably the universal custom of peculation, 
recognized under the old patriarchal government and still 
practiced, also does much to weaken the sense of public 
obligation. 


NONCOOPERATION RETARDS FAMINE PREVENTION 


Not only does this noncoéperative spirit retard progress 
in the country, through preventing more rapid industrial 
development and exploitation of China’s natural wealth, 
but it makes itself felt in other affairs of life, which perhaps 
even more intimately touch the subject of famine. Take, 
for instance, the development of irrigation, the building 
and maintenance of dikes, and the construction and repair 
of highways. ‘These are all projects which would assist in 
preventing famines. They are, likewise, projects which can 
be developed by community enterprise. But they are seldom 
undertaken except under official auspices. 

The writer has been over many stretches of almost impass- 
able road which could easily be repaired in a few days of 
the leisure time of the near-by residents. But nothing is 
done; the villagers sit idly at home unless, perchance, they 
themselves are forced to drive an unwilling mule and over- 
loaded cart over the stretch of bad road. An inquiry as to 
why the road was not mended would elicit the reply from the 
villagers that it was not their business to do it. It probably 
is the duty of the local official. But were pressure brought 
to bear on this functionary to make the necessary repairs 
(for instance, to smooth the way for a visit of a higher 
official) he would no doubt make them by impressing the 
very villagers who declared that it was not their duty to 
do the work. 


106 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


It would seem to the casual foreign observer that in China 
nobody offers help to anybody else unless he is under some 
particular obligation. If a fruit peddler falls down in the 
street and spills his load nobody helps him to pick up his 
scattered goods, although probably many will stop to witness 
his misfortune and to watch his efforts. If a horse falls on 
a slippery hill, it is the duty of the driver alone to get him up. 
Even if a man falls and injures himself so severely that he 
is unable to proceed on his way, no stranger steps forward 
to lend him a helping hand. If there is a policeman near by 
it is his duty of course to assist. Under the old Chinese 
system any person who involves himself in another's mis- 
fortune, may be held responsible for it and be arrested by 
the police when they arrive on the scene. Such a prospect, 
it must be acknowledged, is enough to discourage the most 
ardent Good Samaritan. | 

This does not mean that the Chinese are not a charitable 
people. The passer-by, indifferently watching the frantic 
efforts of the fruit seller to gather up his wares, would probably 
at once respond to the appeal of a beggar. But this is the 
recognized thing to do; the other isnot. The noncodperative 
instinct is evidence of the extremely keen struggle for exist- 
ence, and it is one of the reasons for China’s present condition. 

It should not be assumed that the Chinese are incapable 
of codperating. The solidarity of the family would at once 
dispel any doubt on this score. Then again, the famous 
guilds of China, which probably had their beginning in the 
Chou Dynasty before the Christian era, evidence a capacity 
for organization that is truly superior. The Chinese have, 
however, given their whole allegiance to their family, their 
clan, or in some instances to their guild without considering 
that they have any obligation to community or country. 
Indeed, the affairs of the community or the state are not 
regarded as the business of the individual but only of the 
government or the agents of the government. 





Ae badass sid 


Fic. 63—In Szechwan. Rice is the staple food of central and south China. 


(Chal sWeed Pee: Ay 


BCONOMIC] CURES BOR EANINE 


In approaching a consideration of the cures for China’s 
famines it should be borne in mind that it is only the chronic 
condition that can be controlled. No one who has studied 
the situation in China today believes that the problem of the 
occasional severe food shortage resulting from some unusual 
catastrophe can be solved for many years to come, assuming 
that the population remains as large as it is at present and 
that new and yet undiscovered means of production are 
not brought to light and utilized. But for the local disasters 
that occur with ever-increasing frequency there is most 
decidedly a cure. Stated in its briefest form, one of the most 
important elements of this cure is a general improvement 
in the people’s standard of living and the creation of an 
economic reserve upon which they may draw in time of need. 

China has not always been as poor as she is today. In 
fact, the writer is of the opinion that the living conditions 
of the common people have seldom if ever been as hard as 
now. <A prolonged series of crop failures would find the 
country both economically and _ politically less prepared 
to meet the resulting famine than at almost any previous 
time; and the records tell us that prolonged droughts, which 
work the greatest havoc, recur with disheartening regularity. 

In almost every dynasty there has been a period of com- 
parative prosperity when the people have had enough to 
eat and have enjoyed freedom from famine, except after 
particularly disastrous natural calamities. It is interesting 
to note, however, the great difference between the population 

107 


108 GHINAS VANDSOR SEA UNE 


of the prosperous periods in the last two dynasties and the 
population today. The golden age of the Mings was just 
after the middle of the sixteenth century, and, according 
to the estimate of the China Year Book, the population at 
that time was only about sixty millions. During the last 
dynasty the most prosperous conditions were enjoyed while 
Ch’ien Lung occupied the throne shortly after the middle 
of the eighteenth century. In this interval of two hundred 
years the population, according to the same authority, had 
increased to approximately one hundred and fifty millions. 
Now, it is believed, there are more than four hundred million 
people to be supported, and the total area of the country is 
less than during either of the periods mentioned above, 
for Korea, Cochin China, Formosa, and other large land 
divisions have been lost to China. This increase in the num- 
ber of mouths to be fed may explain why the period between 
disasters is becoming shorter and shorter. In Shensi province 
the historical records report famine conditions on the average 
once every twenty years before the beginning of the Ming 
Dynasty in 1368 A. D. and once every ten years since that 
time. During these five and a half centuries the population 
of China has multiplied seven-fold. Japan, China’s nearest 
great neighbor, has reached the point where she has not 
sufficient home-grown products to feed her people; and it is 
the writer’s opinion that the legitimate food requirements of 
the Chinese are not now being met in spite of the fact that 
the value of her food imports is, on the average, nearly 20 per 
cent higher than that of her exports. 

The following figures on the import and export of food- 
stuffs have been deduced from the Maritime Customs Trade 
Statistics and include the last three years for which data are 
available: 


Year Ex ports Imports 

1921 $164,000,000 $167 ,000,000 
1922 176,000,000 213,000,000 
1923 212,000,000 248,000,000 


These totals include living animals and food of all kinds 
as well as beverages. Allowing for the grain smuggled out 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 109 


of the country it would still seem probable that imports 
would be greater than exports. And thus, since a large part 
of the people are undernourished, it appears that China as 
well as Japan is not now self-supporting. This does not, 
of course, mean that she could not support herself if her 
resources were properly developed. 


SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 


Even without enlarging the area of cultivated land, the 
production of foodstuffs could undoubtedly be increased by 
adoption of modern methods where they are shown to produce 
better results than the old practices as, for instance, in a more 
scientific rotation of crops or the utilization of more efficient 
plows and cultivating machinery. The schools of the country 
are not unmindful of these advantages, and many of them are 
laying greater emphasis on scientific agriculture. The greatest 
difficulty experienced has been in getting graduates to use 
their knowledge in a practical rather than a theoretical way. 
In China it is not customary for an educated man to engage in 
manual work of any sort. Farmers’ sons who have had the 
advantage of going away to school do not return to the farm 
after finishing their agricultural course but seek an oppor- 
tunity to teach; and many of them who fail in finding such 
employment drift into other lines of work where their special 
training is lost but where their dignity as men of education is 
preserved. In the current language, they have developed into 
“silk gown’ men. 

The teaching of modern agriculture is at present confined 
for the most part to institutions of higher learning, a plan 
that further encourages this divorcement from the ewan. lial 
the case of missionary schools where a foreign language is 
taught, a large proportion of graduates, even those who have 
had the advantage of specialization, accept positions with 
foreign institutions or business firms. If modern methods 
are to be widely introduced, up-to-date agriculture must 
be taught in the lower schools, and students who have had 
the advantage of such training must return to the farm where 


110 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


they can make use of their knowledge and spread it in their 
community. The Chinese farmer is not impressed with theo- 
ries nor willing to try new ideas unless they have been 
demonstrated to his satisfaction to be effective. One can 
thoroughly sympathize with this trait when it is recalled 





Fic. 64—Famine refugees. These people had no economic reserve. 


that individual holdings are, for the most part, small and 
that the family’s food supply for the year is dependent on 
the success of the crop. A crop failure might mean starva- 
tion, and the average man cannot afford to take chances. 

While one recognizes the great achievement of the Chinese 
in maintaining the fertility of the soil by their methods of 
fertilization, it is undoubtedly true that the introduction of 
chemical fertilizers would improve some of the crops. This 
is a matter receiving the attention of agricultural schools 
where laboratory work is being carried out; but it will be 
necessary to take the message to the man on the land and 
to carry out a demonstration before his very eyes. Further- 
more, the Chinese farmer cannot afford anything but the 
cheapest available fertilizer without the extension of credit. 
The introduction of better credit facilities would also permit 
the use of better farm equipment. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE III 


INTRODUCTION OF NEW Foop CRops 


About thirty-five years ago a foreign missionary residing 
in China tried the experiment of introducing peanuts. It 
was found that they grew finely, and it was not long before 
a large section of Shantung province, where the soil was 





Fic. 65—Cowhide rafts are used for freight to shoot the rapids on the upper 
Yellow River. 


sandy and considered of little use, began to yield an ever 
increasing harvest of this crop. At present they not only 
form a recognized item in the diet of the Chinese, but the 
export of peanuts and peanut cake has grown to surprising 
proportions. This crop is now grown in every province, and 
in 1923 the value of exports alone, which is but a fraction of 
the total production, amounted to nearly ten million dollars, 
United States currency. Since peanuts grow in sandy soil, 
which is considered of little use, this crop represents almost 
a clear gain in production. 

The introduction of sweet and Irish potatoes and American 
corn has proved of even greater importance. Potatoes have 
become the staple vegetables for the poorer classes in some 
of the northern provinces and together with corn have taken 
a recognized place in the diet of the people. It is thought 


112 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


that these foods, comparatively new for the Chinese, were 
introduced from the Philippines, where they were first raised 
by the Spaniards, probably in the latter part of the seven- 
teenth century, and that the increase in production made 
possible by the adoption of these new crops has been a factor 
in the great growth in population since that time. 


THE Soy BEAN 


A striking example of the introduction and utilization of 
new crops may be seen in the case of the soy bean. Until 
recent years, beans and bean products have not occupied 
a place of importance in commerce, although they have been 
used as an article of food by the Chinese for centuries past. 
It is chiefly due to experiments of the Japanese that the value 
of the by-products has been established. In addition to 
the tremendous quantity of beans consumed locally every 
year as food, the value of the exports of this product alone 
totals many tens of millions of dollars annually. Modern 
Manchuria may be said to have been built on the soy bean. 

The principal commercial articles derived from this 
commodity are bean oil and bean cake. Bean oil is used 
by both the Japanese and the Chinese, in the form of sauce 
and for cooking purposes, as a base for soap making, as a 
lubricant, and as an ingredient of printing ink and lacquer. 
Bean cake is used as a fertilizer and in some cases as food for 
cattle. Bean curd is a staple article of diet in China, and 
there are literally scores of other by-products of the utmost 
importance to humanity. The soy bean is in fact a new 
universal provider. 

It is the tremendous possibilities of this product as a food 
that concern us most intimately in a discussion of famine. 
Nearly fifty years ago it was predicted by an Austrian 
scientist that soy beans would eventually play a very im- 
portant rdle in the diet of the human race; but it was not 
until the Great War caused a scarcity of food that a thorough 
examination of their possibilities was undertaken, chiefly 
by German specialists. Ten years ago the soy bean was 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 113 


proclaimed the “culture plant of the future,’’ and great 
progress has been made in developing it. Dr. A. A. Horvath 
of the Peking Union Medical College, in a discussion of this 
product, has stated that it contains all the elements necessary 
for normal growth and that its protein appears to be quite 
as valuable as the casein of milk. It is the only known seed 
meeting these requirements. 

One of the chief merits of the bean is its cheapness. The 
market price for an equivalent of one hundred calories of 
beef is thirty times as great as for one hundred calories of 
the beans. Soy bean flour has been prepared by the Hun- 
garian food physiologist, Dr. L. Berczeller, who has patented 
the process. The nutritive value of one pound of the flour 
is equal to two pounds of meat plus one-quarter pound of 
wheat flour; but the price is only one-twelfth of the corre- 
sponding cost for meat. 

The bean flour is not a substitute for wheat flour but is 
a natural vegetable complement which can be substituted 
for expensive animal foodstuffs and lower the living rates 
of humanity to a degree not to be successfully reached either 
by the use of potatoes or maize or by intensive farming. 
Since the Chinese are not.a meat-eating people, the soy 
bean will not serve them as a meat substitute; but its high 
nutritive value and low price will make. possible its substi- 
tution for a portion of the grain which is now the staple, 
and almost the only, variety of food. 

Although soy beans are grown in various parts of China, 
the crop reaches its greatest commercial value in Mancburia. 
It is said that this region produces 70 per cent of the world’s 
output, and vast stretches of untenanted, cultivable lands 
still are available there. Proper encouragement of the 
cultivation of the soy bean and its adoption into the diet 
of the Chinese masses will do much to assist in meeting the 
food problem of the future. 

There are probably many other foreign products that 
would thrive in China, for almost every variety of climate 
is here represented—from the cold, dry region in the north 
to the central provinces, which have a heavy rainfall, and 


114 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


the almost tropical belt in the far south. Plants may be 
found that will grow on land now considered of little use; 
others may prove economically more practical than those 
now cultivated and will replace them; and still others may 
be grown as auxiliary crops during a part of the year when 
the land, under present conditions, may be out of use. 


PLANT AND ANIMAL IMPROVEMENT 


It would appear that the Chinese farmers have not dis- 
covered and applied those laws of heredity that make for 
improvement in agriculture. By careful seed selection the 
University of Nanking has recently doubled the yield of 
corn over the fields from which the original seeds were taken, 
and this was accomplished in four years. A variety of wheat 
selected from a native field has been found that is superior 
to eighty other Chinese and imported varieties and that 
gives a yield of forty bushels to the acre. 

It is not only the growing of larger food crops that will 
assist in preventing famine, but the improvement of other 
products will result in greater wealth, and this wealth can 
in turn be exchanged abroad for food. The growing of better 
cotton, the production of more readily marketable silk,?’ 
and the better culture of tea will all have the effect of im- 
proving China’s economic status. It was China that first 
gave silk and tea to the world; but other countries have so 
greatly improved these products that Chinese goods have 
been left behind in quality and far behind, consequently, 
in markets. Japan has outstripped her in the exportation 
of the better grade of raw silk; and China’s tea trade is now 
but a shadow of what it was sixty to eighty years ago. India 
and Ceylon have had little difficulty in capturing the foreign 
market for the common cheaper varieties. This is due to 
the fact that the traditional Chinese methods of cultivation 
are not based on scientific knowledge. 

*7 An encouraging recognition of the need for improvement may be seen in a survey 
of the silk industry of southern China by the Department of Sericulture of Canton 


Christian College (Ling Nan Agricultural College), the results of w igh are published 
as Agricultural Bulletin No. 12, Canton, 1925. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 115 


Insect pests and plant diseases cause famine only indirectly 
by decreasing the yield of foodstuffs. The preventable losses 
occurring under both these heads, however, are truly enor- 
mous. One example will suffice. In northern Chekiang an 
insect pest called Min Chung has been found to work great 
havoc on the rice crop. It eats its way into the stem of the 
rice ears, causing them to die before the kernels are fully 
developed. The Chinese Economic Bulletin in a recent issue 
published an estimate of the losses from this insect. In 1924 
the crops in six counties, of a total area of approximately 
640,000 acres, were damaged to the extent of more than 
$13,000,000, Chinese currency. This is about $20 an acre.” 


ECONOMIC VALUE OF TREE PLANTING 


There are literally millions of acres of worthless land where 
valuable forests might now be growing to provide China 
with timber, to relieve agriculture of the necessity of supply- 
ing fuel to the population, and to assist in improving the 
economic status of the people and so furnishing them: with 
a margin to meet the periods of failing crops. That the raising 
of trees for their wood alone is a profitable enterprise has been 
proved. The writer in traveling from Tungkwan to Sian 
in Shensi province saw great numbers of wood lots along 
the valley of the Wei River. This area is composed of 
extremely rich agricultural land and is densely populated; 
but wood is so valuable that it pays to substitute cottonwood 
trees for other crops. Irrigation is practiced extensively in 
this district, and it is customary to grow cottonwoods along 
the sides of the irrigation canals. An extension of these 
practices to other provinces might well be carried out. 

The raising of fruit-bearing trees would provide additional 
food, which could be eaten in times of crop failure and in 
good years could be dried or preserved against the day 
of want. 

Because of the shade they cast and the nourishment they 
take from the soil, it is not likely that trees can be grown to 


28 Chinese Econ. Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 256, Chinese Govt. Bur. of Econ. Information. 
Peking. 


116 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


any extent on the plains. Also the great scarcity of fuel makes 
the protection of the young trees a much more difficult matter 
on the lowlands than in the hills where the pressure of 
population is not so great and where there is usually some 
erass or underbrush which can be garnered to meet the 
more pressing needs of the people for fuel. 

Most of the plains, particularly in northern China, are 
subject to inundation. When the drainage from the flooded 
areas is slow it ofttimes happens that winter overtakes 
the inhabitants before the water has left their land, and the 
fuel supply in the form of kaoliang stalks and roots, straw, 
bean and sweet potato vines, etc., is buried under a sheet 
of ice. Thus whole districts find themselves suddenly with- 
out fuel enough to cook their food, and then what trees there 
are must be sacrificed, regardless of their degree of maturity. 

During the winter of 1924-1925 the writer made a trip 
from Paotingfu to Tientsin to inspect the region inundated 
by the floods of the previous summer. Almost the entire 
distance of about a hundred miles was made by ice boat, and 
the route lay over the flooded crops of the farmers. A region 
of several thousand square miles was covered by a sheet of 
ice (Fig. 53): scarcely a tree or blade of grass was visible, ex- 
cepting along one of the main dikes where trees had been 
planted to strengthen it against erosion, and these presented 
a pitiful sight. The smaller trees were for the most part 
broken off, leaving a stump two or three feet in height. The 
larger ones had lost their limbs not in any regular way nor 
by saw or axe, but by a process of tearing; and, in a few 
instances, some rude implement had been used to hack at 
the trunks of the larger ones in a vain effort to fell them. 
One was reminded of the scarred and shattered remnants of 
the trees of the Argonne Forest in France after several years 
of war. 

Among the hilly regions where the slopes are too steep for 
cultivation lie the best possibilities for forestation; but in 
these regions great labor is necessary, especially at the 
start; for the young trees must be watered for the first two 
or three years, and water is usually scarce and must be 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE LLY 





te. 


Fic. 66 


Oe 
* 





Fic. 66—Refugees from Chihli floods of 1924 living on dikes. (Photograph 


by Lawrence Impey.) 
Fic. 67—In flood times many families take to boats. 


118 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


carried up frorn the valleys. This prodigious labor probably 
discourages the natives, especially when the returns are 
delayed for a number of years, and ‘in fact, may not accrue 
during a lifetime. But the solidarity of the family is such 
that if something in the nature of family wood lots could be 
established and the economic benefits of such projects 
demonstrated, the impetus given to tree planting would 
in course of time contribute much towards the relief of China’s 
wood shortage. 


COLONIZATION TO RELIEVE OVERCROWDING 


If the population of China were redistributed to relieve 
the densely crowded provinces of their burden, a cure for 
chronic famine conditions could be effected by this: means 
alone. The cure would last at least until the plains again 
became overpopulated, a circumstance which, if present 
conditions continue, would unfortunately happen again 
in the course of time. But the opening up of thousands of 
square miles of good farm lands would afford a considerable 
breathing space and meanwhile a change in customs might 
result from the introduction of industrialism or from other 
causes and gradually decrease the present high birth rate. 
It is a scientific fact that comfort and prosperity militate 
against human fertility quite apart from the development 
of a habit of voluntary control. 

Although parts of China are so congested, still there remain 
vast stretches of sparsely settled arable land. Most of this 
land is in Mongolia and Manchuria, which furnish the best 
areas for colonization; but, even among the provinces con- 
stituting what is still commonly known as China proper, 
there are several that could accommodate much larger 
numbers. In Yunnan, Kweichow, Kansu, and Kwangsi 
there is ample room for a larger population. These provinces 
comprise nearly 28 per cent of the total area of China proper, 
but their population is less than 10 per cent of the total. Man- 
churia, with an area 24 per cent as large as China proper, has 
only about 5 per cent of the population. Mongolia, with 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 119 


1,370,000 square miles, is nearly 90 per cent as large as 
the original eighteen provinces but has only one-half of I per 
cent of its population. It is only the fringe of Mongolia, 
however, that is habitable for man. Chinese Turkestan 
and Tibet are also vast areas which are more or less open to 
the settlement of Chinese, although climatic and other 
geographic considerations make a large movement of em1- 
grants to these far-away territories difficult if not impossible. 
The most accessible regions next to the four provinces of 
China proper mentioned above are Inner Mongolia and 
Manchuria. 

The adventurous spirit that settled the western part of 
North America is entirely lacking in China. Conditions may 
be considered in some degree analogous to those of the United 
States in the nineteenth century. There are fertile sparsely 
settled regions, but there are also hardships and dangers 
to be overcome if they are to be occupied. In America it 
was the Indians, in China it is the bandits that must be dealt 
with. Climatic conditions, too, are different in Mongolia 
and Manchuria, where the best lands are.. The winters are 
cold and long, and agricultural methods successful on the 
great eastern plains will not produce the same results farther 
north. But the great factor against Chinese emigration is 
the innate conservatism of the race coupled with a lack of 
proper governmental encouragement and support. The well 
known American slogan, ‘‘Young man, go west,’ has no 
counterpart in China; in fact, the common proverbs stress 
rather the desirability of a quiet life at home and compare 
such security and serenity with the perils and discomforts 
to be met in traveling abroad. Not that the colonization 
movement is altogether lacking. For many years there 
has been an advance of the Chinese farmer into Manchuria 
and Mongolia. Mr. Dudley Buxton estimates it at an average 
of a mile a year for the last 50 years over a considerable front.”? 
But those who go are few by the side of the millions who re- 
main at home. Likewise the emigration movement overseas 
has afforded no appreciable relief to the pressure of popula- 


22 The Eastern Road, pp. 144-145. 


120 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


tion. The total number of Chinese now residing abroad 
has been estimated at not much over 8,000,000.*° 

It will take outside pressure to. break down the con- 
servatism of the Chinese, particularly of the Northerners, 
who cling to their old homes with a tenacity born of twenty 
or thirty centuries of tradition. 


MIGRATION DURING FAMINE 


But there are times when such outside pressure auto- 
matically comes into play. During famine periods large 
numbers of people migrate. Apparently there has never 
been any attempt to direct this migration in such wise 
that the people whose home ties have been severed will settle 
in a region where there is a possibility of permanently better 
conditions of life. It has been the custom to discourage 
people from moving and to feed them at or near their homes; 
and, unless a carefully prepared plan is followed and provision 
made to support the wandering families in the colonization 
region, this course is much the better one. As a general 
rule the wanderers do not get far, and those who manage 
to survive eventually find their way back to the old home. 
But the relief given by the government and other agencies 
might as conveniently be extended in districts that are 
suitable for colonization and the wandering people led or 
transported to such places. The assistance given them would 
then tide them over until their first crop was harvested just 
the same as if they had remained at home. 

Certainly this method is not as cheap as the old practice 
of distributing grain in the famine belt, nor is it nearly so 
easy. But it has the unquestionable advantage of providing 
effective and lasting relief for the overcrowded condition 
that is at the root of the famine evil. 

It is not proposed that all the families in a famine-affected 
district should be moved. The idea is to ascertain, when it 
becomes evident that there will be a severe famine, what 
number of people should or could be moved; then, when the 


30 Ta Chen: Chinese Migrations, with Special Reference to Labor Conditions, 
Bull. U. S. Bur. of Labor Statistics No. 340, Washington, 1923. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE I2I 


pressure for food is severe enough so that families will consent 
to migrate, to move them out. If the movement is started 
in time, it will relieve the congestion in the affected districts, 
and what food is available will go further toward meeting 
needs. The railways which bring in loaded cars of grain will 
not take them back as empties, but filled with the emigrants 
and their belongings. 

The most needy families—those which have no land or 
at least very small holdings—will be the first to emigrate, 
and the community will be relieved of the necessity of sup- 
porting them in future emergencies. The land of those who 
move out can be held until the famine is over and conditions 
have become normal and then sold to others in the district 
and the proceeds credited to the former owner, who in the 
meantime can be given a potentially more valuable holding 
in the new district. 

Such a method of relief requires good organization, as- 
sistance from or close codperation with government officials, 
and honest administration. One is constrained to wonder 
what changes in the conditions of the districts most severely 
affected by the 1920-1921 famine would have resulted from 
the use in such a way of the $37,000,000 expended in relief. 
It will be recalled that most of this sum was distributed for 
free relief. The utilization of famine relief funds for coloniza- 
tion purposes in times of distress is, however, to be regarded 
only an adjunct of a permanent government colonization 
scheme. 





THE “FRONTIER MOVEMENT’”’ 


With the so-called awakening of China and the knowledge 
of what has been accomplished in other countries, there is 
a growing tendency for the people themselves to attack some 
of these huge economic problems along modern lines. The 
‘frontier movement,” sponsored by Dr. Yu Tinn Hugh, 
is probably one of the best-known projects dealing with this 
question of the movement of population from overcrowded 
to sparsely settled regions. It is primarily an educational 
scheme, designed especially to spread a knowledge of the 


122 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


benefits that colonization will bring to the individual and 
the country. But to be effective it must be coédrdinated 
with some definite organization having a plan and ample 
funds to provide the necessary capital for the colonizers to 
start them in their new homes. In the North and Northwest 





Fic. 68—-A settler’s temporary quarters on Feng Yu-hsiang’s colonization 
scheme in the Northwest. 


there is but one crop a year; and, if the people are moved 
during the winter, they must be supported until the following 
fall and in addition have enough capital to buy seed and a 
few simple farm implements and perhaps live stock. 


COLONIZATION COMPANIES 


Another innovation which has possibilities is the or- 
ganization of colonization companies. These are formed 
primarily as money-making ventures. One or more capi- 
talists will secure a large tract of land in virgin fields and 
offer certain inducements to settlers. This generally includes 
sufficient capital to carry them until the first crop is harvested. 
Thereafter, a certain proportion of each crop is turned over 
to the colonization company. For the most part, these 
schemes have not proved successful, for the company’s 
purpose is to make money, and in the beginning the returns 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 123 


_ 


are slow. It is difficult to make the colonists stay. After 
all the land is not their own, the winters are long and hard, 
they are far from what they regard as home, and in a strange 
environment. It needs the assurance of unusual returns to 
hold men under such circumstances. Furthermore, as the 





Frc. 60—The motor road between Kalgan and Kansu built by General Feng 
Yu-hsiang was kept clear of bandits by his troops. 


colonization companies are simply concerned with labor, 
they only take families because they believe that such a 
course will result in a larger degree of contentment on the 
part of the men and consequently in a smaller labor turnover. 

Both colonization companies and the “frontier move- 
ment’? are beneficial, however, even though they do not 
make sufficiently radical changes to bring effective relief 
for overcrowding. They encourage a tendency toward 
change, they assist in spreading the knowledge that there 
are places where conditions of life are less severe, and they 
prepare the way for a greater and more comprehensive move- 
ment of population which may eventually bring the desired 
and much-needed relief for China’s overcrowding. 

One of the discouraging features of the present colonization 
tendencies is the lack of security in the bandit-infested regions 
of Manchuria and Mongolia. When any community has 
had a good crop or has succeeded in amassing any quantity 


124 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


of worldly goods, these bands of outlaws swoop down upon 
it, carry off everything of value that is movable, and perhaps 
even hold a few of the leading citizens for ransom. An Ameri- 
can colonization company in Manchuria, which after several 
years’ operation was just beginning to prove successful, was 
recently raided and the American manager lost his life. It 
is this reason which makes necessary the effective coédpera- 
tion of the officials. 


THE EXPERIMENTS OF GENERAL FENG YU-HSIANG 


An official colonization project of recent years is that 
undertaken by Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, commonly called 
the Christian General. Marshal Feng is one of China’s 
conspicuous military leaders, having figured prominently 
in nearly all the civil wars since 1922. After serving as 
Governor of Shensi and Honan, he moved his troops in 1923 
to Peking, where they have been in virtual control ever since. 
After the war of 1924 he established himself in Kalgan and 
was officially recognized as the Governor General of the 
Northwest. This territory includes Inner Mongolia and 
provides one of the best areas for settlement. The Peking- 
Suiyuan Railway makes these districts readily accessible, 
and General Feng early saw the benefits possible from 
bringing into the area new settlers from the crowded provinces 
of Shantung and Chihli. 

His first step was to move about a thousand heads of 
families from Shantung to the new country in order that 
they might see for themselves what conditions were like before 
bringing their entire households. Although no official reports 
have been made on the subject, it is believed that only a 
small portion of this number remained during the first winter, 
the others getting disheartened and returning to their old 
homes. This was a sufficiently discouraging start, but a 
much more serious setback occurred to the scheme when, 
after his successful campaign against Tientsin, Feng suddenly 
resigned all his offices and went into retirement, turning 
over his duties to his subordinates. Undoubtedly this will 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 125 


break the continuity of the colonization plan, for if the 
Christian General’s military organization falls to pieces 
other officials with different ideas will take over the control 
of the Northwest and the scheme of colonization may be 
given up entirely. 

This instance shows in a striking way the necessity for the 
control of such projects by an effective central Government, 
where plans which have been carefully prepared may have 
a chance of being followed through year after year regardless 
of any changes in local officials. | 


INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 


The industrial development of China will do much to take 
care of the excess labor that is at present such a burden to 
the land. The opening of factories in the principal ports 
has already had a noticeable effect in neighboring districts, 
and an appreciable improvement in living standards has 
followed. The opening of mines, the construction of rail- 
roads, and other developments making available to China 
and the world the latent wealth of this great country will 
provide employment for increasing numbers, and the results 
of their toil will be to afford the masses greater conveniences 
and more of the comforts of life. Incidentally, the exportation 
of the products of China’s mineral resources, either in the 
raw state or as manufactured articles, will provide credits 
abroad for the importation of foodstuffs. In the writer’s 
opinion, however, it will not be necessary to import food 
unless the population increases considerably. China’s under- 
nourishment is due, as has been pointed out before, in part 
to the poor distribution of crops which better transporta- 
tion would rectify. The betterment of economic conditions 
would provide capital for improving agriculture. 

The establishment of an export trade in manufactured 
articles will be a difficult matter for years to come, for, with 
Japan as a neighbor, the capture of foreign markets will 
not be easy. Eventually, however, with China’s superior 
natural resources, the time may come when she will find it 


126 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


possible to meet the Western powers and Japan on their 
own ground. Meanwhile, raw materials may be sold abroad 
in ever-increasing quantities, and there is sufficient home 
market to take the output of as many factories as the limited 
capital of the country permits. This latter aspect of the 
matter, the supply of the home market, does not seem yet to 
have dawned on those publi- 
cists who fear China’s compe- 
tition in the race for markets. 
Industrialization will march 
hand in hand with increased 
purchasing power, whose pos- 
sibilities, as Sir Edwin Stock- 
ton, a leading British business 
man, has pointed out, are 
magical.*! 

A comparison of the enu- 
merated articles listed by the 
Maritime Customs a decade 
ago with those of the current 
year shows that the Chinese 
are demanding from foreign 
markets more and more com- 
modities that were formerly 
foreign to their taste and that 
have gradually become neces- 

oe sities. This demand is due 

Fic. 70—Irrigation from a stream ae 
in northern China. (Photograph by partly to the economic im- 
Hartung.) provement of the people and 

partly to the keen desire of 
the present-day Chinese to share in the cosmopolitan fruits 
of modern invention and industry. 

The late Wu Ting-fang once said, and Lord Riddell has 
recently made a similar comment, that if one could succeed 
in adding an inch to the shirt tail of every Chinese, the cotton 
mills of the world would be kept busy for years in supplying 
the increased demand. This is a facetious comment on the 





31 Financial News, January 14, 1926, London. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 127 


apparent inexhaustibility of the Chinese market, once pur- 
chasing power approximates that in Western countries. 
There are still millions of Chinese who are not provided with 
the ordinary requirements of life and whose shirts are merely 
patches of cloth disguised as garments. It is not to be pre- 
sumed, therefore, that a home industry, no matter how in- 
tense its development, will be 
able to cope unaided with 
home demands. Rather, with 
the betterment in the eco- 
nomic position of the Chinese 
as aresult of the industrializa- 
tion of the country, the de- 
mand on foreign markets will 
pursue its present upward 
trend until China becomes in 
fact a 400-million-purchasing- 
power country, whose require- 
ments the mills of the whole 
world will be competing to 
supply. 

And in addition to the ad- 
vantage derived from China’s 
expanded buying power, the 
industrial countries of the 
West are reaping benefits in 
the disposal of machinery . = 
and equipment to her infant Fic. 71—A native pile driver. 
industries. 





HOME AND VILLAGE INDUSTRY 


Probably as great benefits to the individual during the 
next few years can be secured through the development of 
home and village industries as will accrue from the few larger 
projects that may be initiated. There are several reasons 
why the utilization of the idle time of the rural population 
at their homes would be preferable to the removal of these 


128 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


people to the cities. These reasons are for the most part 
of a social nature, the usual problems that attend the massing 
of large numbers in an industrial center. 

No country can compete with China in turning out products 
where the principal cost of production is for direct labor. 
In the interior able-bodied men will work a twelve-hour day 
for but the equivalent of fifteen or twenty cents, American 
money. Even first-class artisans get very little more, and 
women are not able to earn even this much in most cases. 
Thus it is that lace making has progressed by leaps and 
bounds of late years, as has also the exportation of hand- 
embroidered silks and linens and objects of art. Most of 
these products are suited to village manufacture. They are 
not too bulky for easy distribution, and they can be made 
on a piece-work basis, thus utilizing the spare time of the 
people. The extension of this form of village industry is 
almost limitless in its possibilities and is much to be desired. 
Although some capital would be necessary, the sum would 
be much smaller than that required for mass production by 
machine methods. 

There are also some enterprises suitable for country 
districts where machines of a simple nature may be em- 
ployed. The introduction of hand looms, for instance, has 
furnished a new source of income to rural communities in 
Chihli province, which has been of inestimable benefit to 
the people. These looms are simple in construction and 
cheap. The yarn is furnished by the large dealers, who in 
turn take the finished product at specified prices. The cloth 
that is made has a ready market, for it is designed for local 
consumption. 

A concrete example of the growth of an enterprise of this 
sort is the knitting of hosiery introduced into Chekiang 
about ten years ago. Where at first a few machines were 
rented out to the villagers, there are now almost 10,000 
owned by many companies. It is estimated that the ma- 
chines are 80 per cent efficient, and each machine operated 
by a housewife in her spare time will produce a dozen pairs 
of stockings daily. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 129 


BETTER CREDIT FACILITIES 


One of the greatest needs of rural China is a provision of 
credit at rates of interest that will make borrowing beneficial. 
The territory comprising the twenty-two provinces is so 
large and has such a range of climate that it is practically 
impossible for the crops to fail over the whole country. The 
problem that presents itself is to find a means of providing 
the credit that would make possible the purchase of the excess 
of the yield in the fortunate districts by the afflicted people 
in. the famine belt. 

It has already been explained that the banks, which are 
of necessity located in the cities, are not easily able to make 
loans to individuals in the villages. Obviously any credit 
arrangement must have as one of its principal features the 
careful oversight of each loan, and this means that some 
purely local agency must be in a position to know intimately 
the character and condition of the prospective borrowers. 
This is particularly necessary when the loan is desired for 
some constructive enterprise, the repayment to be made 
from the expected profits. And it is, of course, a prime 
requisite when no security beyond the integrity of the 
individual borrower is offered. The maintenance of such 
an agency by the banks would more than eat up the profits 
from transactions undertaken. 


COOPERATIVE CREDIT SOCIETIES 


The Famine Commission, which early saw the great need 
for rural credits and carried out a thorough study of the 
subject, has found a solution in the experience of Western 
countries—a solution which, in the writer’s opinion, will 
in a few years revolutionize the present credit practices of 
China. This idea was none other than the rural codperative 
credit scheme devised by Raiffeisen in Germany in 1848, 
which it is interesting to note arose out of the serious famine 
conditions of that time. Briefly, this plan provides for the 
banding together of individuals in rural communities for 
the purpose of obtaining loans from outside sources on the 


130 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


joint security of the members, each of which accepts un- 
limited liability for the actions of all the rest. The funds 
so received are reloaned to the members at a slightly higher 
rate, the difference serving to build up a reserve fund. 

This is a singularly simple device, but it meets almost 
ideally the needs of rural China. The men who join such a 
society are all known to one another, and, since each must 
agree to assume any undischarged obligations of any of the 
other members, the unreliable or otherwise undesirable 
elements in the community are automatically eliminated. 
The intimate knowledge possessed by the members about 
the affairs of all the others provides personal security only 
as the basis of loans. This intimate knowledge also makes 
possible the unlimited liability which is the greatest factor 
in convincing the lending bank of the integrity of the society. 
The localization of the group and their mutual knowledge 
insure a careful inspection of the uses to which the individual 
loans are put. 

While the banks are unable to do business with the indi- 
vidual farmer on a profitable basis for either party, the com- 
bined business of a group of perhaps forty or fifty is worth 
their while. The joint security of the members of the credit 
society obviates the necessity of investigation, and the rate 
of interest need not, therefore, be higher than for ordinary 
business transactions in the cities. 

The organization of the societies provides an executive 
committee elected by and from its membership, each member 
having one vote. This committee has the power of making 
loans to the individual members from the society’s funds. 
Since loans can be contracted only for specific purposes, 
there is elected, also, a council of inspection, whose duty 
it is to see that funds advanced are devoted exclusively to 
the purpose named. All the officers and committees serve 
without remuneration. Thus the societies are run at prac- 
tically no cost. Money is borrowed from outside and re- 
loaned to members, inspection is made, books and records 
are kept, and all the operations of the society are carried 
out by the members themselves. 


ECONOMIC, CURES FOR FAMINE 131 


A new credit idea, even one which has proved successful 
in other countries, must be demonstrated to be thoroughly 
effective before it is taken up by so conservative a group 
as bankers. This is particularly so in China. The Famine 
Commission soon realized that a demonstration would have 
to be made altruistically. After a detailed study of the 
methods employed in other countries, a model plan of 
organization adapted to Chinese requirements was drawn 
up and sufficient funds were allocated for the experiment. 
At first the progress was designedly slow; after more than 
three years’ operation, there are less than a hundred rec- 
ognized societies to which a total of approximately $50,000 has 
been loaned, the Famine Commission acting as the central 
bank. The project is still considered to be in the experimental 
stage, but its success can be foreseen. Not a society has 
defaulted in making repayment. The societies contain 
many hundred members, most of whom have received 
advances, and no member had defaulted up to the time of 
writing. The banks are already beginning to be impressed 
with the stability of the societies. 

Coéperative societies will eventually be organized in all 
the provinces, and, when they are linked together by a central 
bank, one of the greatest famine-prevention agencies will 
have been formed. Ultimate success does not necessarily 
depend upon government assistance, although this would 
greatly stimulate the movement, as it has done in India; 
but at least, the movement will need to be free from govern- 
ment interference in the form of heavy taxation or the 
commandeering of the resources of the bank or the societies 
by officials. | 

Given a stable government, foreign capital might be made 
available to augment the surplus wealth of the towns, and 
this would find its way into food production. 


NEED OF UNIFORM COINAGE 


One of the necessary aids to the free circulation of goods 
is a uniform coinage for the whole country. At the present 
time every province and even many a city in the same 


12 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


— 


province has its own currency. Nominally, each one accepts 
the government standard adopted in 1910, but even the silver 
dollar (China has a silver standard) has a different value in 
different parts of the country. Following the custom of 
thousands of years, most of the retail business in the interior 
is still carried on by the use of strings of copper cash or of 
copper coins, each the equivalent of ten or twenty cash. 
The rate between coppers and silver varies from day to day. 
In Peking a silver dollar will now buy more than three hundred 
coppers. Five years ago it bought less than half this number. 

At the present time there are mints in nearly all the 
provinces, which are equipped to turn out silver dollars. 
However, they mint silver only when a profit can be realized; 
when no profit can be made many of them turn to copper 
coins or suspend operations altogether. The government 
currency bureau at Peking, supposed to control all the 
mints, has failed to do so, and the provincial authorities have 
come to regard minting as a source of revenue rather than 
a public service. Hence the coins that are turned out are 
not uniform in weight, fineness, or appearance; and many 
of them are good only in the province where they are made, 
being accepted in other provinces at a discount. 

The deplorable condition of the country’s currency is 
widely recognized. Mr. Rodney Gilbert, writing in the 
North China Herald, August 19, 1916, puts it this way: 

If a man comes into a shop one day when 93 cash constitute a hundred, 
of these 93 cash 70 per cent should consist of large cash and 30 per cent 
small cash, and he makes a 29 cash purchase, he will readily spend an hour 
or so arguing with the shopkeeper as to what 70 per cent of 93 per cent of 


29 is; and since the Chinese have no actual system of reckoning on paper, 
it must all be calculated with the ubiquitous swan pan, or “abacus.” 


sé 


Is it any wonder, then, seeing that a hundred cash are 
not a hundred cash and a thousand cash not a thousand, 
that the Chinese say that if you take any given sum on the 
street and convert it ten times, ‘‘you will have nothing left, 
even if you start with a million.”’ 

Numerous attempts have been made in recent years to 
correct this condition but without success. A reform of the 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 138 





FIG. 73 


Fic. 72—Native junks are becoming scarce on the Upper Yangtze. 
Fic. 73—Steamers like this of the Standard Oil Company are replacing the 


junks on the Upper Yangtze. 


7 


134 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


currency would bring great benefits, and indirectly would 
affect even the famine question by stimulating trade and 
making the circulation of products easier. 


THE MARITIME CUSTOMS 


There is much talk of the desirability of increasing the 
tariff rates of the Maritime Customs in order to provide 





~omnene -t és 7 < . 


Fig. 74—The extension of the Lung Hai Railroad through the loess country 
in western Honan. 





‘ 


‘needed revenue for the administrative expenses of the 
Government,”’ and there is at the time of writing a tariff 
conference in the Capital, at which China and the foreign 
powers are endeavoring to reach an agreement whereby 
China can obtain additional revenue without adversely 
affecting the trade of the individual nations. 

Even assuming that the revenue derived from increased 
duties were devoted to constructive projects—a supposition 
open to considerable question—the wholesale increase of 
custom duties would work great harm. The importation of 
machinery, lumber, railway equipment, and all the other 
products on which industrial expansion depends should be 
encouraged rather than hampered. China is rich in raw 





ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 135 


materials, but she will not be able to use them for her own 
benefit or that of mankind without modern machinery. 


ABOLITION OF INTERIOR CUSTOMS STATIONS 


Increase in custom duties is supposed to depend on the 
abolition of likin, or transit taxes, in the interior. China 
is dotted with these barriers, all of which take their toll 





is 


Fic. 75—The native cart tracks are flooded in wet weather. 


of dues on all domestic goods in transit. In 1921 the number 
of recognized tax barriers totaled 735, and each of these 
had a number of substations.®2. Foreign goods are protected 
by treaty from these impositions, having merely a transit 
tax at one point instead of many transit taxes at many 
points. Such, at any rate, is the theory, but in recent years 
the Chinese have shown a disregard for treaties with the 
result that foreign imported goods are handled in the same 
uncertain way as domestic. No one seriously believes that 
abolition of these obnoxious dues is possible for many years, 
for it would mean the voluntary relinquishment of revenue 
on the part of various provincial military leaders and a conse- 


2 C. K. Moser: Likin—China’s Inland Trade Tax, Commerce Repts., No. 23, 
1920, DP. 592-595: 


136 CHINA: LAND, OF FAMINE 


quent increase in the resources of the militarist who happens 
to control Peking and the so-called central government. 

But the abolition of likin on domestic goods is more im- 
portant than on imports, for the volume is much greater; 
and the imposts on the movement of foodstuffs from province 
to province is one of the direct causes of famine distress. 
The complete annulment of this practice is needed, not only 
for foreign-made articles but for all classes of goods. Such 
action would have a salutary effect in improving conditions. 
As Adam Smith wrote a hundred and fifty years ago: 


Were all nations to follow the liberal system of free exportation and 
free importation, the different States into which a great continent was 
divided would so far resemble the different provinces of a great Empire. 
As among the different provinces of a great Empire, the freedom of the 
inland trade appears, both from reason and experience, not only the 
best palliative of a dearth, but the most effectual preventative of a famine, 
so would the freedom of the exportation and importation trade be among 
the different States into which a great continent was divided. 


BETTER TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES 


The immense importance of improved communications 
in famine relief has been most effectually demonstrated in 
India. ‘‘The greatest administrative achievement of the 
last twenty years has been the extension of communications. 
Railways have revolutionized relief. The final horror of 
famine, an absolute dearth of food, is now unknown.’’® 
China’s need is too evident to require more than a mere 
recital of the fact. Of the eighteen provinces of China proper 
there are still five that are entirely without railroads, and 
several of the provinces have but a few miles of line. In 
addition to this, the vast territory of Tibet and Turkestan 
is entirely cut off from rail communication with China proper: 
the existing lines originate at the eastern seaboard and extend 
less than five hundred miles inland from the coast. The 
richest and most populous province, Szechwan, is without 
a mile of railway, most of the trade being borne by the 


3 The Imperial Gazetteer of India: The Indian Empire, Vol. 3, Economic, new 
edit.. Oxford, 1907, p. 482. 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 137 





Fic. 78 


Fic. 76—The Famine Commission has built more roads in China than any 


other single agency. 
Fic. 77—Famine Commission roads are built for proper drainage. 
Fic. 73—A Famine Commission motor road in Shensi with native cart road 


at the side. 


138 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Yangtze River, whose dangerous rapids make steam naviga- 
tion difficult. 

The rivers of China are for the most part unsuited for 
steam navigation because of their unstable channels; but 
many of them are navigable at certain seasons of the year, 
and the introduction of modern steam vessels is possible to 
a certain extent. The old hand-propelled junks are still 
carrying the bulk of China’s freight, but for the transporta- 
tion of food in times of emergency this method is too slow 
unless the stricken area les downstream from the regions 
where a surplus is available. In the northern provinces 
the period of greatest distress is in the low-water season when 
many of the streams are dry, and this is particularly so when 
the famine is due to drought. 

As a preventive of famines the first requisite is the construc- 
tion of additional railways, especially trunk lines to link 
up the rich grain-producing provinces with the northern 
area where crop failures are most likely to occur. At the 
same time the building of roads would make the movement 
of supplies to and from the railheads cheaper and more 
expeditious. Improvement of waterways and introduction 
of power-driven craft where possible would complete the 
modernization of China’s transportation system. 


Goop Roaps MOVEMENT IN CHINA 


The Famine Commission, by utilizing the able-bodied 
members of famine-stricken families, has built more roads 
in China than any other single agency. Such an impetus 
has been given to the road movement that a Good Roads 
Association has already been formed by the Chinese. In the 
course of the Famine Commission’s labors all types of high- 
ways have been tried, and experience has confirmed the 
opinion of its engineers that for China’s present needs the 
dirt road is the best—a conclusion similar to that found by the 
good roads movement in the Argentine. This type of road is 
not only cheaper than macadam but is more easily main- 
tained. After the rainy season it is always necessary to 


ECONOMIC CURES FOR FAMINE 139 


make repairs, but with a dirt road this is a comparatively 
simple matter; and if in the dry season the surface is oc- 
casionally sprinkled and rolled the highway will be suitable 
even for motor traffic. In order to maintain it at all, how- 
ever, it will be necessary to exclude the native narrow-tired 
carts, ideally constructed to make ruts. An effort is being 
made to introduce carts with wide tires which will carry a 
heavier load without impairing the condition of the highway; 
but until this can be accomplished it is probably a better 
policy to reserve the center part of the road for motor traffic 
and to build on each side and at a lower level a section for 
the native carts. Experience shows that an ordinary dirt 
road in northern China can be maintained at an annual 
cost of not more than fifty dollars, United States currency, 
a mile. 


Foop CONSERVATION 


The fierce struggle for existence in China has naturally 
led to a conservation of food. In fact, the principle has been 
so firmly established by the practice of generation after 
generation that it has become ingrained in the social customs 
of the people, their philosophy, and even their religion. 
Mention has already been made of the now abandoned govern- 
ment granaries, which retained the surplus of good years 
until they were needed in years of want; but the most 
important conservation practices are to be found in the social 
customs of the people. To waste food is a sin. There is a 
proverb which states that those who do not waste rice will 
always have rice to eat. 

Meat, poultry, and fish are conserved in salt or in bean 
oil; vegetables and eggs are also preserved by immersing 
them in brine. These are, of course, household customs; and 
thus far very little has been done toward the keeping of 
food in large quantities against the day of need, excepting 
the old granary system mentioned in a preceding chapter. 
Great good can be achieved by the adoption of scientific 
principles of storage on a larger scale, especially for saving 
grain. Refrigeration for meat and fish has not yet been 


140 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


developed to any extent though there are one or two plants in 
the treaty ports. Fish forms a principal article of diet in 
some districts of China, and the conservation of this product 
by refrigeration is greatly needed. 

Last year there was a large crop of potatoes in Suiyuan 
in Inner Mongolia. They were a drug on the local market, 
and a hundred pounds could be bought for about ten cents, 
American money. Yet at Peking, only three hundred miles 
away, the price was many times as great although there is 
a railway between the two points. This condition, due 
in the main to civil war, often occurs with other vegetables, 
and the suggestion has been made that dehydration would be 
a great aid to the conservation of the surplus in such in- 
stances. There are probably great possibilities in this idea, 
although it has not even been tried as yet in China. Dehy- 
dration greatly decreases the weight and bulk of the product; 
and, when one considers the difficulties of transport in China, 
it will be seen that such a proposal has more than one argu- 
ment to recommend it. 

In spite of the general thriftiness and frugality of the people 
there is one food that is regularly and universally wasted 
in China, namely fruit. Fruit does not form as important an 
item in the diet in China as it does in the West, probably 
because of the difficulty of transporting a bulky and perishable 
product. Better marketing facilities will help the situation, 
but the practice of drying the surplus or preserving it for 
future use will do most to conserve this item of the food 
supply of the country. 





Wis : 


Fic. 79—Deforestation through centuries has resulted in scarcity of wood. 


(CHBDAU EATER ial 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 


One is prone to believe that natural calamities are not 
preventable. But it is surprising how many disasters could 
either be averted altogether, or their dire effects mitigated, 
+f treated scientifically and in time. Itis, of course, impossible 
to foresee the occurrence of earthquakes, typhoons, and 
tidal waves in time to take preventive measures to save 
property or to do anything to make them happen less fre- 
quently. In fact, there is very little which can be done to 
lessen the severity of the consequences of such visitations 
of nature’s wrath to the unfortunate people who are caught 
by them. But, fortunately, famines of a widespread nature 
are almost never due to natural phenomena of this category. 


CURES FOR DROUGHT FAMINES: TREE PLANTING 
ONEAPELLARGE -OCALE 


It has been said that whereas the calamitous results from 
too much or too concentrated rainfall can in most cases be 
avoided, man is not able by any means so far devised to 
induce rain by his own effort. There are those who believe 
that forests, if sufficiently wide in extent, will ensure ample 
and regular rainfall. But scientists are not agreed on this 
point. Without wishing in any way to disparage the bene- 
ficial effects which the forestation of China’s barren hills 
would have on the country, the writer is constrained to 
disagree with the theory that simply by planting trees in 
suffacient numbers periods of drought would be prevented. 
Even supposing that such a course should have the desired 

I4I 


142 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


effect, under present conditions in China it would be well- 
nigh impossible to carry it out. 

The drought area in northern China is, for the most part, 
a great plain almost every foot of which is under cultivation. 
The only land not utilized for growing crops is that occupied 
by villages and grave mounds. If we must have a forest 
cover to “‘attract’’ rain over this vast territory, eight hundred 
miles long and three or four hundred miles wide, where are 
we going to plant the trees? Certainly no one would advocate 
taking good grain land out of cultivation for such a purpose. 
As to the mountain regions west of the plain, they present 
perhaps even more difficulty. The hills are so barren that no 
moisture is retained for any length of time. It is therefore 
necessary to water the young trees planted there at least 
twice a year for several years until they get astart. Foresters 
tell us that each watering requires ten gallons of water. This 
is the normal load for a man carrying the water up the steep 
slopes from the valleys below. The amount of human labor 
that would be required to plant enough trees to have any 
appreciable effect on the rainfall is beyond computation. It 
may be that a careful study would result in the discovery of 
some sort of shrub that would grow without being watered and 
would form sufficient cover in course of time to retain the 
necessary moisture to make possible the growing of trees. 
Only by some such device can the hills and mountains of 
China be wooded. But even assuming there were extensive 
forests in the hill country to the westward, there is no proof 
that a regular and ample rainfall would be secured for the 
plains where the moisture is needed. 

We must accept the conclusion that droughts are certain 
to recur at intervals (assuming that no radical climatic 
changes introduce new factors in the situation) and must 
lay plans to cope with them rather than waste our efforts 
in a vain endeavor to change the processes of nature. 


IRRIGATION OF THE CHENGTU PLAIN 


The Chinese people in historic times recognized the value 
of irrigation, as is attested by ancient remains. One of the 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 143 








Fic. 81 


Fic. 80—Trees in northern China proper are found only in and around the towns 


and villages. 
Fic. 81—Tree planting in Shensi province. 


until they get a good start. 


The young trees must be watered 


144 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


oldest major projects and practically the only one main- 
tained through the centuries at maximum efficiency is the 
scheme that provides water to the Chengtu plain in Szechwan 
province. The enterprise, which dates back to the fourth 
century before Christ, is recognized as a great engineering 
feat, and Western experts have marveled that it could have 
been carried out in days when the science of engineering 
was practically unknown; they even say that there is much 
to learn today from a careful study of this project. 

Chinese history tells us that the Chengtu plain, which 
comprises an area 3500 square miles in extent, was originally 
a barren waste unfit for human habitation because of its 
aridity. The provision of water has converted the region 
into a land of plenty supporting in prosperity a population 
estimated at 6,000,000. It is referred to as ‘‘the Garden of 
Western China” and produces a rice crop which never fails.*! 

Briefly the scheme consists in the distribution of the rusb- 
ing waters of the Min River over the whole plain. This is 
effected through a diversion of the stream, at the point where 
it emerges from the hills, into a network of canals. The 
work took many years to execute and has been improved and 
extended at various times since its inception. It is necessary 
every year to clean the silt from the canals, and in order 
to dry the channels a dam is constructed in the late winter 
and removed in the spring. Many dams or weirs are con- 
structed along the main watercourses, and Persian wheels 
are used to lift the water from the canals onto the fields. 


OTHER OLD IRRIGATION PROJECTS 


The old Chinese irrigation schemes of any size are usually 
situated along streams where they emerge from the hills, 
the lack of efficient pumping machinery making it necessary 
to put the water on the land by gravity alone. The con- 
struction of dams for storage against the dry season and for 
raising the water level so that a large area could be covered, 
was a difficult matter for the ancients. This was usually 


34 Chinese Econ. Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 7, Chinese Govt. Bur. of Econ. Information. 
Peking. 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 145 


accomplished by carrying the intake for the canal far up 
into the hills and leading the water in a channel along the 
course of the river but with a lower gradient so that it came 
out high up on the plain. 

A good example of an ancient native scheme is to be found 
on the Wei-pei plain of Shensi province. There are five 
rivers crossing this plain, and three of them have been used 
for irrigation. The oldest works were constructed toward 
the end of the Chou Dynasty, more than two thousand years 
ago. According to history, this and the Chengtu scheme 
were the first large projects carried out in China. Water 
was taken from the King River which is at the northwestern 
corner of the plain and led in a main canal along the foothills 
in an easterly direction. Lateral canals at frequent intervals 
covered the territory to the southward, and we are told that 
4 total of no less than 660,000 acres, or more than 1000 
square miles, was served by this project. With the passage 
of time the river has cut down its bed and built up the plain 
until at present the old Han intake, which may still be 
identified, is more than forty feet above the bed of the stream. 
As nature made it increasingly difficult to get water from the 
river onto the land, the intake for the main canal was moved 
farther and farther up the narrow gorge. Its construction, 
in the solid rock along the side of the cliff, must have been a 
tremendous task, considering the implements employed. This 
mammoth work, once so beneficial, is now practically useless, 
for the limit of the native Chinese methods has been reached. 
Only six thousand acres, or less than ten square miles, is 
now watered bv the project. 


BENEFITS FROM IRRIGATION OF THE SHENSI PLAIN 


The Wei-pei plain is the richest grain-growing area in 
Shensi province. In good years it not only furnishes food 
for the surrounding territory but helps also to feed the people 
of southern Shansi and western Honan. But it is, unfortu- 
nately, one of the driest regions in this section of China, 
and only occasionally are bumper crops harvested; every 


146 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


few years they are a total failure. The Famine Commission, 
after having spent more than a million dollars in Shensi 
for relief work in 1920-1921, half as much again in Shansi, 
and nearly four times that amount in Honan, felt that the 
time had arrived to investigate the possibilities of doing 











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CHINA INTERNATIONAL FAMINE RELIEF COMMISSION 


SHENSI IRRIGATION SCHEME 
34 





60 KILOMETER 
40 MILES 






JANUARY , 1926 
PREPARED BY oP” y) 
TRACED BY CrP) eu 









Fic. 82—The Wei Ho valley is the richest grain-growing area of Shensi but 
is subject to frequent drought. 


something to prevent, if possible, the early repetition of 
such conditions. The old irrigation scheme was examined, 
and a staff of modern-trained engineers was engaged to make 
a thorough survey of the region. The result of this study 
is a project, whose details are now being worked out, that 
will provide water for an area of 680,000 acres, or more than 
was provided for by the original scheme at the time of its 
greatest efficiency. The plan includes the construction of 
a high concrete dam far up the gorge of the King River and 
a tunnel more than a mile and a half long through a moun- 
tain, neither of which features could be accomplished by 
native methods. The estimated cost of the first section of the 
scheme is approximately $1,500,000, Chinese currency. This 
will provide water for more than a third of the area. 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 147 


The benefits of this work from the point of view of famine 
prevention alone will be enormous. ‘The present average 
crop on nonirrigated land is probably about 800 pounds 
an acre, while on the small section that is watered the yield 
is three times as great, or 2400 pounds an acre. Thus the 
provision of sufficient moisture would increase the grain 
supply of the province by more than a billion pounds annually, 
and this is enough to feed a population of more than two 
million people, according to the diet outlined in the first 
chapter. In addition to the increase in crops and because 
of this increase, the value of property would be considerably 
enhanced. The present cost of nonirrigated land on the plain 
is estimated at $60, Chinese currency, an acre; but of tirri- 
gated land, from $120 to $180. At an average of $150 an 
acre, the increased value of the lands in the province resulting 
from the construction of this work will be more than $60,000,- 
000, while the total cost of the whole scheme will be but a 
small fraction of this sum. 


IRRIGATION ON THE GREAT PLAINS 


In the plains far removed from the hills, where the need 
is equally great, the problem is more difficult of solution. 
It is a pitiable sight to see the crops along the course of the 
Yellow River in Honan and Shantung dried to a cinder for 
want of moisture, while just a few feet away on the other 
side of the dike is water in abundance. A careful survey of 
the plains would probably reveal many localities where 
water released from the rivers would, if properly led, spread 
over large areas by gravity alone. This subject is worthy 
of detailed technical study. 

On account of the danger of breaking the dikes, even if 
provided with proper gates, it would perhaps be most satis- 
factory to take water over them by siphon. For it must 
be remembered that the rivers are in many cases higher 
than the surrounding country—which makes the siphon 
method possible—and in almost every instance are held 
in their courses solely by means of earthen dikes. Without 


148 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


accurate maps, which at present are few and confined to 
4 small section of the country, it is not possible to estimate 
how far this idea could be developed. The writer, from his 
travels back and forth across the plains, is inclined to believe 
that very wide areas could be irrigated by this means along 
the lower courses of many of the larger rivers. The points 
for taking water from the streams would need to be selected 
with care, for they should provide sufficient fall and should 
be situated where the course of the river is stable, particularly 
during the low-water season. It must be borne in mind also 
that the irrigation canals would silt up rather quickly, 
particularly with Yellow River or Yung Ting River water. 
Hence, considerable upkeep work would be necessary, Bue 
knowing the benefits of a dependable water supply, the 
farmers, if properly directed, could be induced to do this 
work in the spare time at their disposal, or a water tax could 
be imposed to provide funds for it. 

The losses from a flood are recompensed, to a degree, 
by the enrichment of the soil resulting from a deposition 
of new earth from the flood waters. Irrigation effects this 
improvement without the accompanying losses, and its 
benefits are therefore twofold. 


IRRIGATION FROM WELLS AND RESERVOIRS 


Irrigation from wells is a practice widely followed, the 
water being raised either by human labor or by that of 
animals. The writer has never seen power-driven pumps 
in China, and probably, considering the abundance of 
labor, they would be profitable only in large enterprises 
where the benefits and the costs might be shared by a whole 
community. But while irrigation from wells is widely known 
and has been practiced for centuries, it is capable of great 
expansion. A geological survey would reveal districts where 
water is obtainable although undiscovered by the residents. 
In other districts farmers are aware that there is water but 
have not the means or enterprise to sink their wells to a 
sufficient depth. In 1920-1921 the Famine Commission 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 149 


and the American Red Cross invested nearly $200,000, 
Chinese currency, in digging wells, more than six thousand 
of them, for irrigation purposes. The increase in value of 
one crop alone was more than enough to repay the cost of 
the work. Each well provides water for four acres, on the 
average, so that this undertaking assures a dependable yield 
to 24,000 acres. If we estimate the increase which results 
from this improvement on the same basis as for the Wet-peti 
scheme, the total annual increase of grain would amount 
to more than 25,000,000 pounds, or food enough for fifty 
thousand people. These figures are not, of course, exact. 
There are many local factors which might change them con- 
siderably either way, but they indicate in general what 
enormous improvements can be effected in this backward 
country with the introduction of new ideas or the extension 
of old ones. 

It is customary in some districts, particularly in central 
China, to store water in the rainy season which may later be 
used for irrigation and other purposes. Huge tanks or 
reservoirs are built in the ground from which the water is 
led or pumped onto the fields in the dry season. The practice 
is not at all general and is capable of great extension and 
improvement. The reservoirs silt up year by year until 
they often become too shallow to hold sufficient water for 
the season. This, of course, is particularly the case in years 
of drought. By a better organization of the villagers the 
tanks could be deepened and enlarged during the slack season 
of the year when the population is practically idle. A good 
deal of labor would be involved, for the capacity of the 
reservoirs is dependent on depth rather than breadth, since 
it is not economically sound to take too large an area out of 
cultivation. 

Irrigation from wells provides a good crop in normal 
years and in years when the rainfall alone is not quite suf- 
ficient. But when prolonged droughts occur, the limitations 
of this method become apparent, for the wells run dry. 
The situation is even worse with storage cisterns for rain 
water, for these give out first of all. 


150 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


CURES FOR FLOOD FAMINE: TREE PLANTING IN FOOTHILLS 
AND GULLIES 


It is generally believed that floods are preventable, and 
vast sums of money have been spent, not only in China but 
also in the West, in the effort to control the watercourses. 
In China, the work has been based on empirical rather than 
scientific knowledge. Dikes have been built without accurate 
surveys and with little reference to the laws of hydraulics. 
Even in the West, where scientific principles have been em- 
ployed and flood-prevention works are of more permanent con- 
struction, the problem has not been completely solved. In 
1925, for instance, severe inundations occurred in several 
countries in Europe because the dikes did not hold. Modern 
engineering practices, however, have prevented a great 
many disasters which could not have been avoided by the 
old methods. Only in a limited number of places in China 
have such practices been applied. In fact, only a few of 
China’s rivers have even been surveyed by modern methods. 

If all silt could be eliminated from the streams and if the 
run-off from heavy rainfall could be retarded in the hills 
instead of immediately rushing down the steep slopes into 
the rivers, the problem of preventing severe floods would be 
a comparatively easy one. Foresters tell us that the planting 
of trees in the hill country will accomplish these results, for 
a thick forest cover will break the force of a heavy rainstorm 
and the layer of leaves and the network of roots will prevent 
the washing away of the soil. The water will filter slowly 
through the humus, reaching the rivers in the plains below 
in smaller volume, and extending its beneficent effects over 
a longer time. While it is almost impossible to plant trees 
on the higher slopes it can be done along the lower gullies 
near the streams and so help to hold up the soil washed down 
from above and also do something toward retarding the rate 
of run-off. This is the method advocated by W. C. Lowder- 
milk of the College of Agriculture and Forestry, Nanking 
University.® 


35 W. C. Lowdermilk: Erosion and Floods in the Yellow River Watershed, Journ. 
of Forestry, Vol. 22, 1924, pp. 11-18. 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 151 


SO a HI: 





Fic. 84 


Fic. 83—A layer of coarse sand left by the floods ruined this good farm land. 
Fic. 84—One beneficial effect of the floods is the layer of rich silt sometimes 
left on the fields. 


152 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


ENGINEERING PROJECTS ALSO NEEDED 


But the forester’s ideal will never be reached; and, while 
he is doing what he can to bring about fundamental changes, 
it will be necessary to call upon the engineer to undertake 
those more temporary, but none the less important, improve- 
ments along the lower courses of the rivers, supplemented 
perhaps by the construction of detention reservoirs in the 
hills by which the rate of flow may be artificially controlled. 

The amount of soil that a stream can hold in suspension 
and carry to the sea is related to the velocity of the 
current and the depth of the water,—both of which factors 
can be regulated through modern engineering methods by the 
straightening of channels and the construction of strong, 
well-protected dikes. The tremendous losses described in 
the second chapter as resulting from the frequent overflow 
of the Hwai River in Kiangsu Province can be prevented 
by the construction of a suitable outlet to carry these 
heavy floods to the sea. A complete and authoritative 
survey has never been made of the whole region involved; 
but the Famine Commission, through its Shanghai Commit- 
tee, has been working towards this end, and a final investiga- 
tion will be made and a specific scheme adopted as soon as 
political conditions permit. 


THE Hwat RIVER CONSERVANCY 


Although a definite project has not been decided upon, 
certain proposals have been made by eminent engineers, 
and rough estimates of the necessary outlay have been 
prepared. Three plans have been presented, of which that 
of the American hydraulic engineer, Mr. John R. Freeman, 
is the most favored because it appears to be the cheapest. 
The other two were drawn up by the board of engineers of 
the American Red Cross in 1914 and by the Chinese National 
Conservancy Bureau respectively. 

Mr. Freeman’s proposal, which is for the construction of 
a straight channel from Hungtze Lake to the sea, would 
probably cost about $12,000,000, Chinese currency. The 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 153 


American Red Cross project, which would take off the flood 
waters of the Hwai through increasing the capacity of the 
Grand Canal, is estimated at $60,000,000, while the Chinese 
plan, which provides not only for the improvement of the 
Grand Canal but also for a channel in the old bed of the Yel- 
low River and very comprehensive improvement to the upper 
course of the Hwai River, is calculated to require $213,000,000. 

For purposes of famine prevention the Freeman scheme 
is the best, for the first requisite is to provide as soon as 
possible an outlet to the sea for the flood waters. The other 
plans carry refinements which, while of great economic 
benefit, should not be permitted to block the commencement 
of the work by the difficulty of raising the larger sums re- 
quired. Also the time needed for the installation of the va- 
rious schemes is a matter to be considered, that of the Red 
Cross engineers requiring six years while that of the Con- 
servancy Board is estimated to require ten years. The 
Freeman plan provides for the immediate digging of the 
outlet channel; and any refinements for improving naviga- 
tion, providing water for irrigation, etc., are to be added 
later when the danger of serious inundation is less acute. 

It has already been stated that the frequent floods of this 
river cause a loss of food sufficient to provide for a population 
of more than 7,000,000 people. If a comprehensive project 
is carried out, this loss will be prevented. In addition, an 
area of 700,000 acres of submerged land in the lakes will 
be reclaimed by the Freeman project; and this will feed an 
additional 3,500,000 people, assuming the yield to be 2000 
pounds anacre. There would also be a considerable economic 
gain from the improvement in navigation that would be 
made in the Grand Canal and from the provision of water 
for irrigation of the area between the Grand Canal and the 
sea. According to the estimate of an expert of the Com- 
mission for the Readjustment of Finance, in an article 
on this subject printed in the Chinese Economic Monthly, 
the economic gain would total more than a billion dollars a 
year, Chinese currency.*® This is made up as follows: 


36 Chinese Econ. Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 15, Chinese Govt. Bur. of Econ. Information, 
Peking. 


154 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 



















14, 6 
36 
JOHN R.FREEMANS SCHEME . 
— ===== JOHN R.FREEMANS ALTERNATIVE SCHEME 
Va @+@-e-e-@ NATIONAL CONSERVANCY BUREAUS SCHEME 
a FOR HWAI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. 
DIKE. WORK PROPOSED BY THE AMERICAN 
/ ( RED CROSS ENGINEERS. 
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Fic. 85—Various conservancy schemes for the Hwai River, provinces of Anhwei 
and Kiangsu. Scale I : 3,500,000. 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 155 


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HWAI RIVER CONSERVANCY SCHEMES Nae en 
° 20 40 am 80 100 120 KM SHANGF : | 
‘ PREPARED BY -.7. Hoek. 
JANUARY , 1926 TRACED BY. /e.Che Peg 





From the point of view of famine distress no area is in greater need of flood 


prevention. 


156 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Gain from land subject to flood, estimated at 10,500,000 


acres (land inundated in 1921), at $60 anacre . . . . $630,000,000 
Yield on 1,250,000 acres to be reclaimed, at $60 an acre . 75,000,000 
Improvement to 33,333,333 acres at $12 anacre .... 400,000,000 


$1, 105,000,000 


This is computed on the complete scheme proposed by the 
Chinese National Conservancy Bureau. 


THE YELLOW RIVER 


The fact that the Yellow River has made but three con- 
siderable changes in its course in the past thousand years 
is an indication that a large measure of control of this difficult 
stream has been obtained by native methods. It is astonish- 
ing that without any accurate knowledge of the elevation 
of the country, in fact, without even the instruments for 
acquiring such information, dikes could be constructed that 
have endured for many hundreds of years. Not only have 
earthern dikes been built, but they have been reénforced 
by stone; while in many critical places protective groins 
have been constructed to deflect the swift current from 
the dikes. 

Modern engineering methods, however, can make the river 
even more safe, and the following passage from a report of 
Engineer Freeman’s should assist in dispelling any doubt 
as to their efficacy: 

The result of all information that the writer has been able to obtain 
about the elevation of the Yellow River’s flood waters above that of the 
plain outside the dikes, together with his personal inspection while floating 
down along the stream in December, 1919, have convinced him that the 
river is no such fierce and ungovernable tyrant as it has been painted, and 
that it regularly carries to the sea more than 99 per cent of the sediment 
which it digs and brings down over the vast loess deposits upstream from 
the apex of the delta, that the rate of raising its bed after having reached 
its present elevation is hardly more than one foot in a hundred years, 
and that means for confining the channel in a straight and narrow way 
and forcing it to dig its bed deeper are within economic reach, and as to 
the many outbreaks recorded in history and shown by the looped dikes 
on the reconnaissance maps, it is plain that these are the result of human 


carelessness and official negligence rather than the result of the wrath of 
the river gods. 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 157 





Fic. 86—A new Famine Commission dike on the Yangtze River. 

Fic. 87—Land reclaimed from the Yangtze River by a dike project of the 
Famine Commission. 

Fic. 88—A completed Famine Commission stone-faced dike. 


158 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


The Yellow River in its upper reaches is well confined 
in its course by hills, and not until it emerges onto the 
great plain in the western part of Honan province does the 
danger begin. From here to the sea, a distance of approxi- 
mately 500 miles, there are dikes on both sides; but these 
dikes follow the course of the stream in all its meanderings 
instead of confining it in a straight channel. The low- 
water surface is on the average fifteen feet above the gen- 
eral level of the plain outside the main dikes, while in the 
high-water season the surface rises to thirty feet above 
the plain. The dikes are nominally five feet higher still 
but in many places are not adequately maintained at that 
height. 

The Famine Commission has begun a thorough survey 
of the course of the river under the management of its chief 
engineer, Mr. O. J. Todd, who has had a wider experience 
with this stream than has any other foreign expert. Since 
1920 he has constructed many miles of dikes along its banks, 
and in 1923 he designed and carried to completion the rever- 
sion works at Liching in Shantung—a project similar to but 
more difficult than the well-known control works of the lower 
Colorado River in America. A considerable stretch in west- 
ern Honan has already been mapped. The Commission pro- 
poses to adopt a comprehensive scheme for the permanent 
control of the river and in case of future famines in Honan 
and Shantung to utilize relief funds in paying able-bodied 
members of refugee families to work on the project, beginning 
at the western end. 

No estimate of the total cost of this work can be definitely 
made until the surveys are complete. The work can be done 
in sections beginning at the upstream end. The constriction 
of the stream also will reclaim large stretches of land. Proba- 
bly this reclaimed and very rich land will be valuable enough 
to pay for a large part of the cost of the work, for in some 
places the dikes are many miles apart. If this territory were 
sold as it is redeemed and the proceeds used for construction 
of the next section, the work, after it was once started, would 
be almost self-supporting. 


159 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 











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AREA SUBJECT TO FREQUENT FLOODS 


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CHINA INTERNATIONAL FAMINE RELIEF COMMISSION 


MAP 


RIVER SYSTEMS OF CHIFILI 


SHOWING 


AREAS SUBJECT TO FREQUENT FLOODS 


36 


SCALE 
0 20 30 40. 50 6 7 ® 90 100KM 


° 


JANUARY, 1926 


1g 


Stk 
ENGINEER 


A 


Fic. 89—It is proposed to solve the flood problem in Chihli by a flood channel 


PREPARED BY ¢.@ Neu: APPROVED ey © 
[tt heusson CHIE! 
th7 


TRACED BY 


16 


: 4,000,000. 


Scale of map I 


to supplement drainage via the Hai Ho. 


160 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


No statistical estimate can be made of the benefits to be 
derived from the improvement of the Yellow River, for there 
is no particular flood area that, is inundated at regular 
intervals. However, permanent control would protect Shan- 
tung and Honan provinces from the danger of flood for many 
years to come, and the increased production of foodstuffs 
on the reclaimed land would greatly help to prevent famines. 


FLOopD PREVENTION IN CHIHLI 


The disastrous floods occurring every few years in Chihli 
are preventable and present a much simpler and less ex- 
pensive problem than the control of either the Hwai or 
Yellow Rivers. The solution, we are told by engineers, 
is to provide an additional channel to the sea from the main 
ponding area. This will serve to supplement the Hai Ho, 
which is now the only outlet for the flow of several rivers 
converging at the city of Tientsin. This channel would be 
about 45 miles in length, 450 feet wide, and 12 feet deep. 
It would carry twice the quantity of water discharged by 
the Hai Ho at its maximum flow; and the cost for earthwork, 
according to the Famine Commission’s estimates, would be 
about $6,000,000, Chinese currency, if done with famine labor. 
Even an elaborate project, to include refinements in addition 
to the simple construction of the flood channel, it is estimated 
would call for only $12,000,000, and this is but 16 per cent of 
the calculated loss from the last flood. 

The benefits of this project, in addition to rendering 
Tientsin, the largest port in northern China, safe from 
inundation, would be the provision of crop insurance for 
an area of approximately ten thousand square miles of the 
richest farm land in the province—an area nearly as great 
as that of Belgium. 

Similar proposals are applicable to many rivers, the more 
important ones being the Pearl and the Yangtze. On these 
and other rivers such improvements could be carried out as 
have been demonstrated in other countries to be thoroughly 
effective. The costs would be heavy but light in comparison 


NATURAL CURES FOR FAMINE 161 


with the benefits derived, and there would be little danger 
of failure if proper technical supervision were given. 


LAND RECLAMATION 


The failure of dikes in past ages or changes in the courses 
of the rivers has inundated large areas in China, and neglect 
to make proper repairs has in some cases resulted in the 
formation of permanent lakes. In many instances the water 
that has taken this land out of production does not reach 
any considerable depth, and the draining of these inland 
seas, or the reclamation by diking of a part of the area now 
flooded, is not an insuperable task. The proper improve- 
ment of the Yangtze River and its tributaries will redeem 
large tracts now forming the beds of Tungting and Poyang 
Lakes. The Hwai conservancy scheme will at least partially 
drain the Hungtze and several other lakes in Kiangsu prov- 
ince whose combined area is more than 1800 square miles; and 
there are other projects of less importance, whose completion 
would be proportionately beneficial. 


Vase Locust] ;-ROBLEM 


A world-wide effort is being put forth to solve the locust 
problem; experiments are being conducted in various coun- 
tries, including a study of the possibility of introducing para- 
sites to the insects, an investigation of the effectiveness of 
spraying swarms from airplanes, as well as a consideration 
of the industrial uses to which the dead insects could be put. 
If useful products could be made from the carcasses of locusts 
so that they had a commercial value, a method of killing the 
insects would speedily be found. Another constructive 
proposal for meeting catastrophes wrought by these pests 1s an 
insurance project advocated in Europe—the farmers of all 
countries taking out policies, whose premiums would serve 
to indemnify individuals in blighted areas. 

Locust insurance might be undertaken in China with 
beneficial results if honestly directed, but it is unlikely that 
enough farmers would avail themselves of it to make it 


162 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


effective in preventing famine distress after a severe visitation. 
There are in most families no extra funds even in normal 
years, for a good crop means only a better diet and not ready 
money. Hence it would be almost impossible, especially 
for the poorer people, to find funds to pay the premium. 

At the Pan-Pacific Food Conservation Conference held 
at Honolulu in the summer of 1924, the following resolution 
was passed: 


Whereas, in all Pacific countries that are subject to plagues of locusts 
or grasshoppers, it is highly advisable that accurate scientific surveys be 
made of lands which may constitute the permanent breeding grounds of 
these insects; and that, when such permanent breeding grounds are 
delimited with some degree of certainty, it is important that they be 
scouted at frequent intervals in order to learn the prospects concerning 
approaching devastating flights, and in order to begin preventive measures 
at the earliest moment. 

Resolved, That the governments of the Pacific countries be advised 
to make such surveys and to establish, where possible, in permanent 
breeding regions biological stations for the study of the factors in natural 
control. 

Resolved further, That where swarms originating from definitely located 
permanent breeding areas, customarily enter lands controlled by different 
governments such governments are urged to establish and to defray the 
expenses of cooperative commissions charged with the promotion of such 
procedures as are indicated in the preceding resolution.*’ 


There is great need for a biological study of this pest by 
some international organization having facilities for making 
the necessary observations in all countries. These studies 
should then be followed by the formulation of a plan of attack 
to be undertaken simultaneously by the various countries of 
the world. Unless treated in some such comprehensive fashion 
there is little hope for success in eradicating this scourge. 

For other natural calamities that may occasionally produce 
local famine distress, such as earthquakes, typhoons, hail- 
storms, and frost, there is no known cure. Crops may in 
some instances be covered to protect them from hail and frost; 
and, when severe storms occur on coasts, stronger sea walls 
may serve to keep back the salt water from ruining farm land. 


37 Pyoc. First Pan-Pacific Food Conservation Conf., Honolulu, 1925, p. 185. 





Fic. 90>—The Great Wall at Kupehkow, (Photograph by F. G. Clapp.) 


GHAR EE Ra 
ROVGELGA eG RSs rO Re rea VULIN 


China is at present engaged in a great experiment. She 
has no traditions on which to build a truly representative 
government, and, considering the lack of education and the 
backwardness and poverty of the masses, it is a question if 
such a government can be evolved without the disintegration 
of the territory now comprising the republic or the assumption 
of the reins of power by some despot able to exact obedience. 
China is really today a republic only in name. There has 
never been an election, and the control of the state has been 
effected by the display of force rather than by the will of the 
citizens. 

There are some who ascribe all the ills manifested by the 
new régime to the last dynasty, asserting that these are 
inherited disabilities of the decadent Manchu house. But, 
even assuming that this is true, it does not explain how these 
evils are to be eradicated, how dishonest officials are to be- 
come public-spirited, how the fatalistic philosophy of the 
race is to be replaced by a sense of civic responsibility, how 
the present reign of force is to be exchanged for a reign of 
law and the war lords induced to disband their armies and 
turn over the administration of the country to civil authori- 
ties. Time alone will tell—probably a considerable lapse of 
time—how this can be accomplished; and it is the writer's 
opinion that if and when an effective and stable central 
government is evolved, it will conform much more closely 
to the requirements of Chinese political philosophy than 
the Western-made republican model so hastily adopted. 

163 


164 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


ForM OF GOVERNMENT Not IMPORTANT 


But for the creation of conditions that will result in the 
prevention of famines it makes little difference what precise 
form the government takes so long as it is maintained in the 
interests of the people rather than for the personal profit 
of the officials. Confucius said: ‘‘The requisites of govern- 
ment are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of 
military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their 
ruler.’ When asked which of these was least important, he 
said: ‘‘The military equipment”; and when questioned as 
to which of the two remaining might be dispensed with 
first, he said: ‘‘Part with the food. From of old, death has 
been the lot of all men; but if the people have no faith in 
their rulers, there is no standing for the state.”’ 


STABLE GOVERNMENT Woutp Stop LossEsS FROM WAR 


The first beneficial effects that would result from the 
establishment of a stable and effective government would 
be a cessation of the evils of civil war, which have been 
discussed in Chapter III. One of the first steps would be 
the suppression of banditry and the disbandment of super- 
fluous troops. Disbandment involves more than a million 
men, if we assume that a standing army of 500,000 is enough 
to maintain order and protect from foreign invasion. This 
is roughly four times the peace strength of the standing 
army of the United States, which has only a fourth of China's 
population. There has been much talk of the disbandment 
of the mercenaries with which the various military leaders 
have surrounded themselves and by which they maintain 
their positions; but the problem is a larger one than at first 
appears. Not only must the chieftains agree to relinquish 
their power, but some provision must be made for properly 
disarming and disbanding their troops and getting them back 
to their homes or finding them employment. For a coolie 
to find work in a district to which he is a stranger is almost 
impossible. Many interesting proposals have been put 
forward for the employment of disbanded troops on con- 


POLITICAL CORES FOR? FAMINE 165 














Pe gee 


gt ee ge og ¢ 


FIG. 93 


oe 


ii DE teal 





Fic. 91—The Chinese sawmill. Labor is plentiful and cheap. 

Fic. 92—Reeds in the Chihli lake region are used to make mats. 

Fic. 93—The Famine Commission mat-making project employed flood victims 
in their homes. 


166 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


servancy schemes; this is an excellent idea, but first there 
must be political stability so that funds for the construction 
of such projects may be forthcoming. 

Reduction in the annual government expenditure for war 
purposes would make it possible either to lower taxes or 
to undertake constructive enterprises. This assumes, of 
course, that demilitarization is accomplished by a reputable 
government and honest officials. 


PRESENT OFFICIAL VIEW ON FAMINE PREVENTION 


A striking example of the present view of the military 
leaders on the problem of famine prevention was afforded 
the writer in an interview with Marshal Wu Pei-fu several 
years ago when he was virtually the dictator of the Chinese 
government. The purpose of the conversation was to discuss 
ways and means for the control of the Yellow River in Honan 
province. The Famine Commission was prepared to start its 
survey of the country through which the stream flows and 
sought government approval and coédperation. The Marshal 
showed much interest in the matter, but it was difficult 
to convince him that a careful survey should be made. 
“Why go to the expense of making surveys’’? he said, “I 
have a perfectly good military map which shows the course 
of the river, which I shall be glad to give you.”” Upon being 
assured that a survey would be necessary and that the 
Commission was prepared to defray the cost he reluctantly 
consented. 

In the course of an hour’s discussion it became evident 
that General Wu had ideas of his own on the subject of river 
control. He first explained that the great difficulty was 
the quantity of silt carried down from the hills and deposited 
in the stream bed every year. If that silt could be kept in 
suspension it would be carried to the sea and the problem 
would be solved. He proposed the purchase of a number 
of tug boats to which could be attached a large spiked anchor 
much like a chestnut burr. He thought that if there were a 
number of these tugs steaming up and down the river dragging 


POLITICAL CURES FOR FAMINE 167 


their spiked anchors, the silt would be stirred up and carried 
to the ocean several hundred miles downstream. 

As we were about to leave, the Marshal mentioned the 
subject of roads of which the Commission had built some 
hundreds of miles not far from his headquarters. ‘‘ Your 
roads are much too narrow” he said, ‘‘only twenty feet where 
they should be sixty.’”’ I explained that if a twenty-foot road 
were built three times the mileage could be constructed with 
a given sum of money. But he was quite firm in his opinion. 
‘All my roads are sixty feet wide,’’ he insisted; and there 
the matter ended. It is true that he did build some roads 
sixty feet wide, using his troops for the work, but a road of 
such width is of no greater service than a twenty-foot road 
except, perhaps, for troop movements. This all goes to 
show that Wu Pei-fu’s main energy and thought were 
directed to military rather than civil affairs; for he is a man 
of education, and, if really interested, would inform himself 
on matters so important to China as river conservancy and 
road building. 

But, while cessation of civil strife would prevent great 
losses, it is the constructive side of the problem that would 
effect: the greatest insurance against starvation conditions 
among the people. 


Crop ESTIMATES AND RESERVES OF GRAIN 


Most famines, particularly those due to drought, can be 
anticipated if there is a proper crop-reporting system. Crop 
estimates can be made at fixed times through the growing 
season, and a sufficiently accurate appraisal of the situation 
arrived at to forecast the probable yield over the whole 
country. If such information were collected by the county 
officials in China and forwarded promptly to the central 
government, plans to meet any impending distress in the 
regions where crop failure was threatened could be drawn 
up well in advance. Although some data are collected, 
the present system is entirely unsatisfactory, because the 
information is not put into usable form until months after 


168 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


the crops have actually been harvested. Poor communica- 
tions with interior districts and civil strife tend to make 
further delays. An efficient and reliable crop-reporting 
section of, say, the Government Bureau of Economic In- 
formation is a vital part of a famine-relief or famine-preven- 
tion bureau. 

The collection of reserves of grain in the walled cities 
throughout the provinces subject to famine distress should 
be encouraged. ‘This grain need not be given to the people 
in the form of doles, in fact, it should not be so distributed 
excepting in emergencies; but it should be put on the market 
at cost to prevent hoarding and profiteering during periods 
of shortage. It should also be used by the government to 
recompense laborers engaged during famine times on the 
construction of public utilities. 


NEED OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR BETTER 
LAND UTILIZATION 


We hear a great deal about the conservatism of the Chinese 
farmers, but, given the means to effect improvements and 
having concrete proof that these means will bring the desired 
results, the Chinese will adopt new methods. The govern- 
ment should provide the means and should undertake the 
demonstration of the beneficial effect of more scientific 
procedure in raising foodstuffs. It is impossible to state 
just what sum is devoted to the maintenance of the Agri- 
cultural Department of the government. It is perfectly 
safe, however, to say that expenditures are entirely inade- 
quate to bring about the improvements that would serve to 
raise the standard of living of the farming population. 

Government action is especially needed for afforestation 
and forest protection. On a visit to the Western Tombs, 
where many of the emperors of the last dynasty are buried, 
the writer witnessed the wholesale destruction of the forests 
now taking place. This is one of the few places in China 
proper where even a semblance of a forest exists. The old 
trees have been preserved for hundreds of years, but the 


FOUCURICAR CURES ROR SBAMINE 169 


WIE is 


Pilli;) 





FIG. 95 


Fic. 94—The beautiful old trees at the Western Tombs are now being cut 
down by the troops. (Photograph by T. J. Betts.) 
Fic. 95—There are literally millions of acres where valuable forests would grow. 


170 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


military authorities are now systematically cutting them 
down to sell for lumber and to use for fuel. We inquired of 
some of the troops why this was being done and were told 
that the regiment billeted there was a “‘forestry’’ regiment. 
Its duty was to protect and preserve the trees; but, since 
they were now no longer the property of the Manchus but 
belonged to the “‘people,”’ they, as the people’s representa- 
tives, were cutting some of them down and shipping them to 
the railhead to be sold. This was said to be necessary in 
order that funds might be provided for the regular payment 
of the “‘forestry”’ regiment. 

About ten years ago a Forest Service was organized by the 
government as a Department of the Ministry of Agriculture 
and Commerce. According to Mr. Dau-yang Lin, $181,000, 
Mexican currency, was appropriated as its first year’s 
budget. The number of men engaged in China’s forest 
service totaled only 70. Germany with an area only about one- 
twentieth as great employed more than gooo, and in Russia 
a force of 36,000 was maintained before the Great War. Mr. 
Lin also compares the relative expenditures of the nations 
for maintenance for a forest service and shows that China’s 
$181,000 is only about a two-hundred-and-fiftieth of Ger- 
many’s budget and a fiftieth of America’s. 

In connection with the utilization of the land, reference 
must again be made to the growth of the opium poppy, 
which takes good grain land out of cultivation. Less than 
ten years ago the cultivation of the poppy was almost entirely 
stopped, but with the continuance of civil commotion the 
acreage has increased year after year until now it is as widely 
grown as ever. A stable government could successfully 
solve this great problem, which has such an important effect 
on the well-being of the masses. 


CHINESE BUSINESS ON SOUND BASIS 


One of the enigmas of present-day China is the apparent 
ability of the people to pursue a ‘‘business-as-usual’’ course 
in spite of the absolute political chaos with which they are 


88 Dau-yang Lin: Chapters on China and Forestry, Shanghai, ro16. 


POLITICAL CURES FOR FAMINE I7I 


surrounded. The Maritime Customs returns show a con- 
stantly increasing volume of foreign trade, factories are 
being built, new industries introduced, markets for new 
products opened up, and a slow but steady advance made 
year by year in the modernization of the country. Last 
year, amid frequent changes in government, student riots, 
and civil wars around the capital, a street railway was opened 
in Peking for the first time in her history; and, in spite of 
frequent difficulties with troops who insist on riding free 
and in spite of coal famines due to the interruption of railway 
communications, the street cars still run and, we must 
assume, make a profit. Another instance of business progress 
is given by the U. S. Department of Commerce: 

There is no more striking example of China’s ability to progress in the 
face of what appears to be insurmountable obstacles than the develop- 
ments in the past few years in Canton. The contrast between the Canton 
of to-day and of seven years ago is striking enough when it is considered 
that this remarkable development took place within the remarkably short 
space of seven years, but it is even more startling when it is understood 
that these seven years represented the most stormy period of Canton’s 


history—years of civil war and strife, extending from the city itself to all 
parts of the neighboring provinces.*® 





Such facts show the soundness of the Chinese business 
fabric. With this background the tremendous possibilities 
for the industrial development of the country, if given proper 
government, can be estimated. 


FAMINE RELIEF METHODS 


The China International Famine Relief Commission 
during this interim of governmental impotence is doing all 
that an organization inspired by philanthropic motives and 
carried on as a purely nongovernmental agency can hope 
to do. Its greatest contribution to the famine question has 
been the working out of a method of treatment that in many 
respects is novel and which may later be taken over by the 
authorities. This method, as will be explained later, uses the 


9 J. H. Nelson: Changing Factors in the Economic Life of China, U. S. Dept. 
of Commerce, Trade Information Bull. No. 312, 1925. 


L72 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


— 


funds contributed for famine relief in such a way as to leave, 
after the emergency is past, permanent works of a famine-pre- 
vention character. A somewhat similar policy has been 
adopted by the Indian government. The Famine Commission, 
it may be noted, worked out its program quite independently; 
and not until its policy had been completely formed did 
it discover that practices in India were in some respects 
almost identical. 

The Chinese government method of distributing relief 
funds in times of disaster is not unlike the practices followed 
by governments the world over where public money is divided 
among the people. It is customary in such instances to make 
an even distribution among the sufferers, and, since the funds 
are usually too meager to provide adequately for all the 
needy until the following harvest, the sufferers receive only 
enough to prolong life for a few days, after which they die 
and the relief funds are buried with them. Philanthropic 
societies in China, following the government’s lead, have 
adopted much the same practice; but some of them have 
gone a step further and selected a smaller number of bene- 
ficiaries providing sufficient relief to keep them alive until 
they can reap a harvest or by some other means regain their 
self-support. In both of these instances, however, the people 
are supported in idleness; for both flood and drought result 
in a destruction of the crops, leaving nothing for the rural 
population to do until the next planting season. This has a 
distinctly unfavorable effect on the farmers and tends to 
lower their morale and force self-respecting country folk 
into the pauper class. 

The American Red Cross in its China Famine Relief Work 
in 1920-1921 adopted the plan of furnishing employment 
to the able-bodied members of stricken families.4° In return 
for a day’s labor on some public work sufficient relief was 
provided to support the laborer and his dependents. The 
wages paid were on a piece-work basis and were intentionally 
kept below the normal wage scale in order that only the 


ssf Report of the China Famine Relief, American Red Cross, October, 1920—-Sep- 
tember, 1921, Shanghai. 


POLITICAL CURES FOR FAMINE 173 








Fic. 98 


Fic. 96—The Famine Commission gives relief in return for labor on famine- 
prevention works. A Han River dike project. 

Fic. 97—Flood-prevention work in Hupeh province built with famine labor. 

Fic. 98—A Famine Commission dike project in Kiangsi province. 


174 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


actually needy might be assisted. Thus the professional 
mendicants were automatically eliminated, as no one who 
could possibly get along otherwise would toil for less than 
the usual rate of pay. Failure to find in any region persons 
who were willing to work under these conditions proved 
that the particular region was not seriously affected. This 
Red Cross experiment was not the first of its kind in China, 
but it was the first of any importance. The work accom- 
plished was the construction of roads, of which 850 miles were 
built during the emergency. 

At the close of the Red Cross operations a large part of 
the public were still unconvinced of the superior advantages 
of the labor relief plan. Hence when the Famine Commission 
announced that it would adopt this policy so far as possible 
for all its operations there was opposition in some quarters. 
However, after six years’ continuous experience of the 
benefits of such a course nearly all its opponents have been 
won over. The Famine Commission has greatly developed 
the Red Cross scheme. Now the policy of employing the 
able-bodied victims of a disaster is not followed for social 
considerations alone but for economic reasons as_ well. 
Projects having a distinct famine-prevention angle are now 
selected, such as irrigation, flood-prevention, and land 
reclamation. In places where there are no undertakings that 
contribute to the increase of production or the conservation 
of foodstuffs, road building is chosen, opportunity for which 
is always and everywhere available in China. 


A REVOLVING FUND FOR FAMINE-PREVENTION PROJECTS 


Since projects of the sort mentioned above are revenue- 
producing or revenue-conserving, a further feature has 
recently been added. It is now the Commission’s practice, 
wherever possible, to regard sums expended on such works 
as a loan to the community benefited and to expect a return 
as soon as practicable, whereupon the funds are devoted 
to other areas needing assistance. A nominal interest charge 
is made to cover administrative and engineering costs. 


POGTTIGALSGURES FOR RAMINE 175 


It will thus be seen that the Commission affords a means 
of organization and finance that has hitherto been lacking 
in rural China. For instance, a flood occurs in a certain 
province, rendering the people destitute. In order to save 
the population the Famine Commission agrees to loan a 
million dollars. This money is expended by the Commis- 
sion’s agents in repairing the dike system, the failure of 
which caused the inundation. The otherwise idle villagers 
are recruited to do the work, and the wage they receive, 
which is less than the normal scale, keeps them alive. With 
the dikes restored and the danger of flood removed a good 
crop is harvested, and ample funds are available to reim- 
burse the Commission so that similar emergencies can be 
met in other places. Or perhaps a famine occurs from 
drought.. The relief funds are used to construct a large 
irrigation scheme, the work being done by the victims of 
the disaster. The provision of a dependable water supply 
makes good crops possible, and the return of the funds is 
made by a contribution from the farmers whose land is 
served. In both cases the food supply is increased, and 
future famines to a considerable extent are obviated. 

Quite apart from the usefulness of this work in itself, 
its greatest benefit is the lesson taught. What tremendous 
good would accrue, and what a great step would be taken 
toward relieving China’s 400,000,000 people from the con- 
stant threat of famine, if a stable government with adequate 
funds were to assume responsibility for carrying through 
to its logical conclusion the undertaking already started! 
For it has been proved to be thoroughly sound. 


GOVERNMENT FAMINE BUREAU 


As soon as an effective government is formed, the writer 
would propose the establishment of a Famine Prevention 
Bureau directly under the Cabinet Office, which should be 
charged also with the government relief work. This bureau 
to be effective must be granted extensive powers and be 
organized for works of widely diversified character. Many 


176 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


elements must be treated simultaneously to bring the most 
salutary results. There must be close codperation with the 
regular government departments, especially the Ministry 
of Agriculture and Commerce, the Ministry of Communica- 
tions, and the Ministry of Education. It is for these reasons 
that a special bureau is recommended, and it should be placed 
under the Cabinet Office to give it independence and 
authority. 

While the National Famine Prevention Bureau should be 
established by the central government, its operations should 
be made effective through similar departments of the pro- 
vincial administrations. The provincial bureaus would be 
responsible for carrying out the actual work of relief, reporting 
regularly to the central office. Authority to remit taxes, 
both national and provincial, should be vested in this 
department. | 

There should be maintained an executive organization 
capable of rapid expansion in emergencies and including 
the necessary technical staff and equipment. In the interim 
between famines it should devote itself to laying plans and 
preparing projects against future disasters. 

The above may be regarded as the relief functions of the 
bureau. More important than these is the preventive work. 
Conservancy, irrigation, land-reclamation, and flood-control 
works should be undertaken as the necessary funds are 
provided by the government, and the same organization 
and staff that function during a famine can be thus employed 
between periods of disaster. Following the plan of the 
American Reclamation Bureau or the Famine Commission, 
these projects can be carried out on a revolving fund basis, 
for the benefits will be many times greater than the cost 
in all cases where the schemes are practical. The Govern- 
ment Famine Bureau would have a great advantage over 
the Famine Commission in that it could collect repayment 
for works constructed by a tax on those who benefited by 
them. This the Commission, as an unofficial body, is, of 
course, unable to do. It has had little difficulty, however, 
in collecting its loans. 


POD E LCA TA GU RTS Sh O Re AVENE lay 


COOPERATION WITH OTHER DEPARTMENTS 


This bureau should effect a liaison with the proposed crop- 
reporting sections of the Bureau of Economic Information. 
In this way a shortage of food in any area could be foretold 
before famine conditions are actually upon the people. There 
are other signs than crops indicating imminence of famine 
distress—influx of beggars into the towns and cities; rapid 
rise in the price of foodstuffs and in the interest rate; unusual 
wandering of people, to be marked especially along the rail- 
ways. Local officials should be instructed to report such 
conditions to the bureau, as well as to give prompt and 
complete data on any natural disaster, such as flood or the 
visitation of locusts. 

Assuming that the policy of giving relief in return for 
labor is adopted by the government, it will be seen that a 
close codperation must be maintained between the bureau 
and the Public Works Department of the various provinces. 
The writer would propose that all conservancy work that 
would normally be undertaken by the central government 
should be put under the bureau. If this were done, projects of 
predetermined benefit could be prepared in advance in almost 
all districts. Close contact with the Ministry of Communica- 
tions would make it possible to employ large numbers of 
able-bodied victims on road and railway construction, and 
the portions of such projects requiring manual labor should 
be pushed forward with vigor during famine periods. 


OTHER FAMINE PREVENTION WoRK 


While conservancy work is being carried out by one 
division of the bureau, other divisions should be formed 
to effect crop improvements, to promote forestry, to develop 
and stimulate rural industries, and to introduce better credit 
facilities for the country population. A close liaison should 
be established with the Ministry of Education in order 
that the bureau’s influence may be brought to bear on the 
educational policies, particularly those of the country and 
the agricultural schools. 


178 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Above all, the appalling results which a continuance of 
present conditions will inevitably produce must be brought 
home to the people of China, and the possibilities of improve- 
ment must be discovered and strongly advocated. This 
can most effectively be done by a properly managed govern- 
ment department. Famines, which have long been recognized 
as nature’s ruthless means of keeping down the population, 
can be prevented; but in order to prevent them the inhabitants 
of the world, and particularly those in overcrowded countries, 
must shoulder the responsibility for correcting existing 
evils rather than pass on to an ever-increasing posterity a 
fruitless struggle for existence against insuperable odds. 





F1G. 99—A course for farmer codperators conducted by the Famine Commission. 


CHAPTER VIII 
SOCIALE CURES FOR FAMINE 


OVERPOPULATION MEANS POVERTY 


There are some optimistic persons, scientists included, 
who do not view the rapid increase in the world’s population 
with apprehension. The writer would suggest for such 
persons a few years’ residence in interior China. Here one 
is brought face to face with the dire conditions that inevitably 
follow when the number of inhabitants is greater than the 
productivity of the land they occupy will support. 

It may be suggested that productivity can be increased. 
This is certainly true. To quote again from Mr. H. B. 
Elliston of the Chinese Government Bureau of Economic 
Information: 


Were scientific agriculture introduced on a wide scale, these lands could 
be made to yield more abundantly. But the country does not seem to 
have arrived at that stage yet, just as it is still in the dirt road stage of 
highway development. You cannot force material progress on a country. 
That comes from cooperation from within, which is again predicated on 
ability to absorb the fruits of such progress. You cannot persuade a 
farmer to buy an up-to-date plough if he is merely subsisting on the ragged 
edge of penury; if he is totally divorced from any help but that created by 
himself. It would therefore seem that age-old methods of agriculture will 
persist for many years to come. 

Many foreigners are attacking the problem of helping China in the 
wrong way by not putting first emphasis on the increase of production. 
Humanitarian enterprises are legion in China, many of them supported 
solely by American funds. Their aim is to preserve the life of the people, 
to teach safeguards against disease and calamity. Thus, some of the erst- 
while checks to over-population are in process of elimination; and coupled 
with the natural geometrical increase of the race, may in the course of time 


179 


180 GHINA LAND OFSEAMINE 


outweigh other considerations in keeping China on the border line of 
economic endurance. The right way to help China is to intensify her 
productivity, so that it will be able to take care of the excessive population. 
Production should come before population in the humanitarian enterprises 
of the West, for population’s sake. For what is the good of saving people 
from disease if finally they have to starve to death in the unequal striving 
for existence which is the constant battle of the majority of present-day 
Chinese? 

But another question arises: Will the increase of production 
bring more comforts of life for the inhabitants, or will it 
simply result in an increasing number of people to share 
existing comforts? 

It has already been stated that the population of China 
doubled between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle 
of the nineteenth century, and a steady increase has been 
made since that time. Europe has increased her population 
two and a half times in the last century. The world has 
doubled its numbers in sixty years. Japan’s population of 
56,000,000 in 1920 represents a doubling in forty years, but 
Japan has been rapidly industrialized. China’s advance is 
below the average rate because the checks are more pro- 
nounced. But even at this reduced rate of increase there 
would be nearly 900,000,000 people in China in another 
century, or more than half of the present population of the 
world. The writer does not believe that this is going to 
happen, of course, but the only factor to prevent it will be the 
failure of production to keep the pace. What does this constant 
battle between production and population portend for China? 
It portends a century of abject poverty for the masses, the 
sort of poverty from which they are now suffering, but 
intensified. It can only be prevented if the fruits from im- 
provements in agriculture, in trade, in distribution of popu- 
lation, and in the development of the country, are restricted 
to something like the present number of inhabitants. How 
is this going to be brought about when apparently the chief 
ambition of the Chinese is the rearing of offspring, when so 
much effort is now being spent to counteract the natural 
checks that heretofore have kept the population within 
bounds? 


SOGCTATITGURES FOR BRAMINE 181 


EDUCATION NEEDED 


The cure for the social causes of famine is, in a word, 
education. This does not mean book learning alone but 
general enlightenment, particularly of the masses, and the 
rousing of public opinion. Up to the present time no scientific 
study has been made in China of important practical problems 
such as has been the rule in Western countries. Even sup- 
posing such studies had been made, dissemination of the 
results would be next to impossible on account of the low 
standard of education and the high percentage of illiteracy. 
Thus the subject must be treated from its very foundations. 
The literacy percentage must be increased while educators 
and social workers are doing more advanced research work. 

The task is a herculean one, for the conditions which it 
is sought to improve are tending constantly to retard the 
work. Overcrowding renders the struggle for existence 
indescribably hard, and one can scarcely be blamed for finding 
it difficult to seek education on an empty stomach or after 
a day of strenuous labor. It has always been a marvel to 
the writer in view of these circumstances that there is such 
a love of learning among the people; but even with the 
willingness to undergo great hardships to gain knowledge, 
which is apparent on every side, there are surprisingly few who 
are able to get more than the most rudimentary education. 


Mass EDUCATION MOVEMENT 


One of the chief obstacles that confronts the educator 
is the difficulty of the language. There is no phonetic al- 
phabet, the written language being represented by something 
like 25,000 different characters. Most of the texts, further- 
more, contain so many characters, and the language has been 
so cumbered with allusions, making exact understanding 
difficult except for the really well educated, that the man of 
meager learning has been unable to make them out at all. 
This has led in recent years to a number of mass education 
movements. Various phonetic alphabets have been devised, 
but these do not meet the need, for China possesses a great 


182 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


number of quite dissimilar dialects. However, the written 
character always has the same meaning even though it is 
pronounced differently in the spoken languages of the country. 

The most hopeful educational movement is one that 
is making very considerable progress at present. It is, 
briefly, an attempt to convey thought by the least possible 
number of written characters. Mr. Y. C. James Yen, the 
leader of the movement, is quoted in the China Year Book as 
having said: 

No greater contribution has ever been made to the cause of popular 
education in China than that made recently by the Literary Revolution 
in abolishing the classical language and adopting the pei-hua (spoken 


language) for all literary purposes. That the adoption of the pei-hua 
facilitates immensely the study of the Chinese language no one can dispute. 


Mr. Yen then goes on to say that after several years of 
study by himself and his associates a course was developed 
consisting of a series of readers called “Foundation Charac- 
ters,’ a course based on 1000 characters representing the 
words most commonly used in the spoken language. Mastery 
of this list will enable a man to write simple business letters, 
keep accounts, and read simple newspapers intelligently. 
It has been demonstrated that this can be accomplished by 
Chinese in four months by one and a half hours of daily study. 
The movement aims to reach the common people and is 
generally carried out by volunteer teachers or students who 
are recruited from the educated classes and who devote certain 
leisure hours to the work. In many cases the school buildings 
are used during hours when they are not required for the 
regular students. A demonstration of the effectiveness of 
this idea in a number of widely scattered cities led to the 
formation of an organization known as the National Popular 
Education Association, and extensive plans are being for- 
mulated to launch campaigns in all parts of the country. 
The greatest progress has, naturally, been made in the cities. 
The problem of reaching the country people is a much more 
difficult one. 

This movement is described to show that there is now a 
growing tendency in China to undertake reforms. It is one 


SOCIAL CURES FOR FAMINE 183 


of the signs that the present unsatisfactory situation is 
recognized and that the people mean to do something to 
remedy it. Such an enterprise together with kindred move- 
ments springing out of the literary renaissance should have 
the whole-hearted support of those who are desirous of seeing 
better times in China. 





Fic. 100—A group of farmer coéperators, members of the China International 
Famine Relief Commission rural credit societies. 


BirtH CONTROL NEEDED 


But while the spread of education and general enlighten- 
ment is a hopeful sign, it must be recognized that unless a 
conscious effort is made to lower the birth rate the effect of 
modern knowledge will do quite as much to increase popula- 
tion in China as to decrease it—probably more, in fact. 
The spread of modern ideas of sanitation, the proper control 
of contagious diseases, preventive medicine, and modern 
surgery will naturally greatly decrease the death rate—at 
least it should logically do so. It may mean, however, that 
the man who is saved from dying of cholera today will die 
of starvation tomorrow. Certainly this will happen if the 
death rate decreases materially and the birth rate remains 
at the same level, other factors remaining constant. The 
writer views this problem with such concern that he would 
even propose as a department of the work of every medical 


184 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


institution the teaching of methods of contraception. In this 
way the birth rate might be lowered at the same time with 
the death rate. | 

While it takes centuries to build up a population as large 
as that of China it would take a comparatively short time 
to reduce it to a size where the productivity of the land would 
support it in comfort. In fact, if the people should be content 
to have just half as many offspring during the next generation 
as were born during the last, the population would probably 
be so reduced that there would be plenty of food for all and 
no hardship whatever would be felt in the process. But 
birth control by the Chinese on any extensive scale is at 
present out of the question; years of strenuous work and a 
change in the basic social concepts of the Chinese must 
precede its realization. 

There is nothing, so far as the writer can find, in the original 
Christian doctrine which cannot be reconciled to a scientific 
treatment of the question of eugenics of which a control of 
the birth rate, where it is excessively high, is an important 
factor. The objections which may be raised on religious 
grounds are, at least, much less fundamental with Christianity 
than they are with Confucianism. Thus the displacement of 
Confucianism in China by Christianity might conceivably 
make the work of the reformer less difficult. However, this is 
a hypothesis which cannot be proved for centuries to come, 
judging from the present registered rate of progress in the 
introduction of Christianity. It would appear in fact that a 
crusade must be carried on in China as elsewhere. 

But even assuming that the psychology of the Chinese 
could be changed and that they could be induced to adopt pre- 
ventive measures, the conditions under which most of them 
live are such that contraception could not be nearly so effec- 
tive as in Western countries. The poverty of the people 
would prevent the purchase of drugs or the various preventive 
devices; also the tremendous task of teaching the people 
their use would be an obstacle of no mean proportions. 

As was intimated in a previous chapter, the introduction 
of industrialism, if it produces the same reactions in China 


SOCIAL CURES FOR. FAMINE 185 


that it has abroad, will serve to check the birth rate; and 
the improvement in the standard of living resulting from it 
will act as a further retarding influence. It is possible also 
that the introduction of the Western form of life insurance 
and also more prosperous conditions will help to destroy the 
idea that it is necessary to rear many children in order to 
have sons to make provision for declining years. 

The adoption and enforcement by the government of a 
marriage law establishing monogamy as the only recognized 
code might assist in a small way to decrease the number of 
births; and indeed government action along other lines 
connected with the population question would undoubtedly 
have effect. 


THRIFT SOCIETIES 


Education would also help to prevent much of the waste- 
fulness of ceremonials. Of late years there has been a reaction 
against the old practices, and those Chinese who have had 
the advantage of foreign training are the most ardent in 
their effort to break the shackles imposed by custom. This 
tendency has asserted itself in the formation of ‘thrift 
societies,” whose members bind themselves not to initiate 
or participate in feasts or other wasteful practices. The 
Y. M. C. A. has done much to develop this movement, and 
“thrift weeks”? are now organized throughout the country, 
when a concentrated effort is made to reach as many people 
as possible with the message of the benefits of saving and 
the evil effects of wasteful ceremonies. This is accomplished 
through lectures, bulletins, and posters. The movement 
should be fostered and encouraged by all thinking people. 

Education, again, must be relied upon to bring about the 
reform in foot binding. An unwittingly beneficial effect of the 
greed of a certain military official has come to the writer’s 
notice. In one of the provinces where the custom of foot bind- 
ing has been religiously followed even up to the present time, 
the military governor without any warning declared that it 
was to cease forthwith. However, it was provided that feet 


186 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


could still be bound if a tax were paid. This tax was on a 
sliding scale, all women over thirty being exempt. The rate 
was highest for the youngest children, tapering off after the 
marriageable age. It was provided that payments according 





Fic. 101I—The chief means of transportation in China. A small junk carries 
very little sail. 


to the age of the child concerned should be made at regular 
intervals so long as her feet should be bound. This is certainly 
a way to get results. 


INFLUENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 


Of late years with the development of transportation, the 
improvement of communications, and the gradual opening 
up of China, it has been borne in upon the people that a new 
era has dawned, and their complacent self-sufficiency has 
been rudely shocked. The impact of Western industrialism 
has indeed shaken this great country to its foundations. It 
has resulted in a transformation even of the form of govern- 
ment, it has served to develop a nationalistic spirit in some of 
the people, it has set in motion forces that will eventually re- 
sult in the complete emancipation of the Chinese women. 
China is truly awakening although, because of the tremendous 
field to be covered, progress is not rapid. 


SUGTALVGURES KORSRAMINE 187 


There has been a growing interest on the part of the 
Chinese in Western education for application to their own 
needs, an interest which has resulted in a marked increase 
in the number of natives who complete their education in 





Fic. 102—Sailing over the inundated fields during the northern China floods 
of 1924, 


foreign countries. There are several thousand Chinese stu- 
dents in the United States alone. Foreign schools in China 
(most of which are missionary institutions) have also met 
with much favor and have long waiting lists of applicants. 
The return to China of thousands of foreign university grad- 
uates has injected new life into the country. This group has 
founded the Chinese National Association for the Advance- 
ment of Education, which has undertaken the tremendous 
task of educational reform. 

While progress has been made in the theory of modern 
organization, the practical side has also been mastered by a 
constantly growing number of foreign-trained mill operatives, 
mechanics, bank clerks, chauffeurs, and the like. It is quite 
generally conceded that the Chinese, under proper super- 
vision, display as much ability in handling mechanical con- 
trivances and in carrying out the routine clerical requirements 
of modern business as do Westerners. Thus, while there is 


188 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


a lack of inventive genius, it would appear that there is a 
capacity of imitation coupled with the ingenuity that has 
always been a characteristic of the race. We are justified 
in expecting an industrial expansion somewhat on the order 
of the development in Japan. The two principal factors 
working against the rapid industrialization of China, quite 
apart from lack of capital or credit organization, are the 
dishonesty of the officials, who prey on developments of all 
kinds, and the lack of codperation on the part of the people. 
Remove these disabilities and there is no reason why China 
should not be the greatest industrial nation in the world. 
The country is rich in natural resources and has an unsur- 
passed abundance of cheap labor. 


CHINESE FUNDAMENTALLY SOUND 


With the awakening of China will come more civic pride 
and more community spirit, and these things in turn will 
make for better living conditions. There are some confirmed 
pessimists about China who can see no future for her but a 
continuation of the present chaos and ultimate breakdown 
and disintegration; but, although there may be great political 
changes and realignments, there are still four hundred million 
Chinese people; and, if history teaches us anything, she teaches 
that a race as numerous and as fundamentally sound as the 
Chinese, which has maintained its political and cultural 
solidarity for so many centuries, will not perish from the earth. 





Fig. 103—Sunrise over the sacred Hwa Shan. (Photograph by C. W. Bishop.) 


CONCLUSIONS 


The chronic famine situation in China cannot be ade- 
quately relieved without a stable and effective government. 
This does not mean, however, that no amelioration can be 
achieved during these disordered times. Any doubt on that 
score has been removed by the operations during the past 
six years of the China International Famine Relief Commis- 
sion and its constituent committees. 

There are some lines of work that will yield results more 
quickly than others. In order of importance they are: 

1. Flood control, irrigation, land reclamation. 

2. Economic improvement, rural credits, colonization, 

home and village industry. 

3. Improved agriculture and forestation. 

4. Development of transportation. 

5. Education. 

Several of these might be undertaken at once. In fact 
all of them should be pressed as vigorously as possible, and 
it should be noted that some progress is actually being made 
day by day in several of these directions. But on account of the 
limited funds at the disposal of codperative enterprise, the 
undertakings that would be most quickly productive should 
be put in the forefront. 

Many persons will not agree with the writer as to this 
arrangement. For instance, some will doubt the wisdom 
of putting education last when the reduction of the birth 
rate is so vital to the prosperity of the people of China and 
hence to the famine problem of the future. But even the 
most sanguine will agree that modification of the fundamental 
concepts of the people will be a very slow and expensive 

189 


190 CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


process. What is needed is the immediate release of the 
masses from the constant threat of starvation. This will in 
itself create conditions where education can be appreciated 
and where more thought can be devoted to the larger social 
aspects of life. 

The greatest immediate benefit to the nation will come 
from insurance of the crops against flood and drought and 
provision of means to increase the area of cultivable land and 
the yield on the fields already worked. This can be done by 
flood control, irrigation, land reclamation, and other similar 
projects which modern engineering has made possible. The 
cost of such work in China, where human labor is plentiful 
and cheap, is relatively small compared with the benefits 
which result; and the effect is at once apparent, even minor 
projects bringing prosperity almost immediately to thousands 
of people. Although the largest schemes must wait for better 
political conditions, there are almost unlimited fields for 
work on problems of small dimensions. 

Next to conservancy, the most quickly productive work 
is the economic improvement of the rural population by the 
provision of better credit facilities, by the introduction of 
home and village industries, by colonization, and similar 
enterprises. Most of these, except colonization, can be 
undertaken at once and carried forward even under present 
conditions in China. Improved agriculture and forestation 
might also be included in this category; but they are more 
difficult to bring about, and their benefits are not so quickly 
apparent. 

The development of transportation is important, but in 
its effects on the famine problem it is put fourth. There 
are already existing trunk lines which serve the provinces 
that are most susceptible to distress, and the cost of extending 
the system is at present almost prohibitive. Quicker results 
can be effected by using funds for conservancy or rural 
improvement. 

Education, in its broader sense, is the fundamental cure 
for the ills not only of China but of the world. It goes hand 
in hand with the projects of improvement listed above— 


CONCLUSIONS IQI 


in fact, it may even be considered an integral part of every 
one of them. Education is used here not in its broad sense 
but in the commonly accepted meaning of the acquisition 
of knowledge from books, and hence is put at the end of the 
list. 

And now for a final word about the population problem. 
In the writer’s opinion it is overpopulation that constitutes 
the fundamental reason for the recent famines in China. 
Futhermore, overpopulation is now a matter of world con- 
cern. What has occurred in China, will if the human race 
lets nature take her course, most certainly occur in other 
lands which are now prosperous. If a pair of rabbits are 
shut in an enclosure which has a limited area of good grass 
they will be comfortably provided for; but their numerous 
progeny will have very hard scratching unless some altruistic 
person throws in fodder from outside. There are optimists 
among us who ascribe to Providence this rdle of benefactor 
to the ever increasing human race, but they fail to take 
cognizance of the fact that no bountiful showers of manna 
have fallen in China. And who will say that there is no need? 


INDEX 


Adoption, 9I 

Agriculture, 38; antiquated methods, 
24; intensive, 25, 27; scientific, 
109, 179; teaching, 4 

American Red Cross, 32, 49; China 
Famine Relief, 172; Hwai River 
conservancy, 152; road _ construc- 
tion plan, 174; wells for irrigation, 
148-149 

Ancestor worship, 88, 90, 100; effect 
on birth rate, 88 

Ancestral tablets, 90 

Anhwei, 45, 48, 49 

Animals, domestic, 78; improvement, 
114 

Arable land, 118 

Armies, 20; army on the march, 64 
(ill.); cost, 78; disbandment, 164; 
excess troops, 77 

Artisans, 128 

Authority, 67 


Bakers | siens 3.35 

Banditry, 75, 119, 123; Shensi refuge 
from bandits, 77 (ill.) 

Banking, 3, 21; rural, 129 

Bard, Emile, 70 

Bean cake and oil, 112 

Bean flour, 113 

Beans, I12 

Beggars, I, 11 (ill.) 

Berczeller, L., 113 

Binding the feet, 98, 185 

Birth control, 183, 191 

Birth rate, 4, 17, 87, 189, 190; ancestor 
worship as related to, 88; concubin- 
age and, 91 

Birthday celebrations, 93-94 

Bishop, C. W., 82, 189 

Boats, families living in, at flood 
times, 117 (ill.); sailing over in- 
undated fields in 1924, 187 (ill.); 
Yangtze junks and steamers, 133 (ill.) 


Borrowers, 22 

Boxer Rebellion, 66 
Buddhists, 100 
Budgets, family, 7 
Burgess, J. S., 11 
Burial, 98, 100 
Business soundness, 170 


Buxton lle. 5 erro 


Canals, 34; irrigation, 144, 145, 148 

Cannibalism, 40 

Canton, 171; dike improvement scheme, 
72 

Canton Christian College, 114 

Capture of citizens, 76 

Carriers, human, 32, 33 (ill.) 

Carts, 139; flooded roads and, 135 
(ll.); with the narrow tires, 31 (ill.) 

Cave dwellings, loess, 61 (ill.) 

Caves, 62 

Census, 84, 85 

Ceremonials, waste, 93, 185 

Chairs for travel, 103 (ill.) 

Chang-chao-lan, 68 

Charity, 106, 172 

Chekiang, 15, 940, 41,)-4 2" 
destroyed, 58 


45; fields 


Ghengeba ston 20 


Chenfu, 12 

Chengtu plain, irrigation, 142, 144 

Ch’ien Lung, 85, 108 

Chihli, 10, 15, 29, 40, 41, 45; dike 
break, 55 (ill.); flood around Hsin- 
An, 36 (ill.); flood of 1924, 53, 56; 
flood preventon plain, 160; ice in 
flooded area, 8g (ill.); river systems 
and flood areas, 52, 159 (map) 

Children, 88, 90; adoption, 91; sale, 2 

China, 1; lowlands and river basins, 
6 (map); povulation increase and 
area, 108; self-support, 108-109 

China Continuation Committee, 16; 
census, 85-86 


192 


INDEX 


China International Famine Relief 
Commission, 7, 32; credit plan, 
129; dikes and land reclaimed by, 
157 (ills.); methods, 171; operations, 
189; relief in return for labor— 
Han River dike, 173 (ill.); river 
regulation plans, 152, 158; roads, 
137 (ills.), 138; Shensi irrigation, 
146 (with map); survey, 10; wells 
for irrigation, 148-149 

China’s Sorrow, 51 

Chinese, 1; fecundity, 87; fundamental 
soundness, 188; mechanical ability, 
187; northern and southern, 83; 
pacifism, 64; residing abroad, 120; 
students abroad, 187 

Chinese Government Bureau of Eco- 
nomic Information, 11, 84, 115, 
168, 179 

Chinese language and alphabet, 181; 
Foundation Characters, 182 

Chinese National Association for the 
Advancement of Education, 187 

Chinese National Conservancy Bureau, 
152, 156 

Chinese Turkestan, 119 

Chou Dynasty, 106, 145 

‘“Christian Occupation of China, The,’ 
16 

Christianity, 88, 
versus, 184 

Chu, Co-Ching, 38 

Ch’uantou, 86 

Civil war, 164 

Civilization, 104; western influences, 
186 

Clannishness, 104 

lapis x. 02,4104 

Classics, 104 

Clothing, 92 

Coinage, need of uniform, 131 

Colonization, 3, I2I-122; companies, 
122; relief for overcrowding, 118 

Communications, lack of, 29, 136 

Community spirit, lack of, 71 

Concubinage, 91 

Confucianism versus Christianity, 184 

Confucius, 65, 67, 101; on government, 
65, 67, 164; on worship of ancestors, 
88 


’ 


90; Confucianism 


193 


Conservation of food, 139 
Conservatism, 100, I19; 
development and, Ior 

Contraception, 184 

Co6éperation, lack of, 71, 104, 106, 188 

Coéperative credit societies, 129 

Copper cash, 132 

Corr Peeris 

Corruption, official, 68, 70, 80, 188 

Cost of living, 7; Chenfu and Huichow, 
I2 

Cotton, 114 

Cottonwoods, I15 

Credit, 20, 129; coSperative societies, 
129 

Cremation, I00 

Crop estimates, 167 

Crops, 13; 20,43, .J42-2iailures: 107, 
110; multiple, 27; new foods, III 

Cultivation, intensive, 25, 27 

Currency, 132 

Custom, IOI, 104, 185 


industrial 


Dams, 144, 146 

Dau-yang Lin, 170 

Death rate, I, 17, 183 

Debts, 94 

Deforestation, 4, 37 

Dehydration, 140 

Density of population, 15. 
Population 

Denudation, 28 

Diet, model, 9 

Dikes, 45, 46, 147, 150, 152; breaks, 
55 (ills.), 56, 57 (ills.); building with 
famine-relief labor, 173 (ills.); failure 
to repair, 71; Famine Commission 
dikes, 157 (ills.); flood refugees 
living on, 117 (ill.); opposition to 
improvement, 72; roadway on a 
dike, 84 (ill.); Yellow River, 50-51 
(map), 54 (ill.), 156, 158 

Dirt roads, 138-139 

Disbandment of troops, 164 

Dittmer Ga Gs7 20 S11 

Dian eevee 05 

Dogs, 95 

Doles, 168, 172 

Domestic animals, 78 

Donkeys as freight carriers, 103 (ill.) 


See also 


194 


Drainage after floods, 46 

Droughts, 36, 107, 142; Chinese method 
of breaking, 44; famine of 1876-1879, 
29; historical data, 38-43; North 
China in 1920-1921, 2 

‘‘Droughts in China’’ (Hosie), 38 


Earthquakes, 59, 141, 162; Kansu in 
1920, 60; loess slide in Kansu, 61 
Gll.); Yunnan, 1925, 62 

Eating, excessive, 95 

Economic reserve, 107 

Educated men, 109 

Education, 104, 189; agricultural, 109; 
foreign, 187; mass movements, I81; 
ministry of, 177; need, 181 

Hdwards se W..2.3 

Elliston, H. B., 84, 179 

Emigration, 119, 121 

Emperors, 65 

Engineering, projects, 72, 
150, 152 

Erosion, 28; prevention, 26 

Eugenics, 184 

Exports, 125 


144, 145, 


Faith in rulers, 164 

Family, cost of living, 7; enrichment, 

- 67; pooling of resources, 24; size, 
4, 13, 87, 88; stressing the family 
unit, 71; system of living together, 


18, 104, 106 

Famine Commission. See China In- 
ternational Famine - Relief Com- 
mission 


Famine prevention, 71, 178; Freeman 
scheme for Hwai River, 153; non- 
codperation a hindrance to, 105; 
revolving fund for projects, 174; 
schemes, 3; views of military leaders, 
166 

Famine Prevention Bureau for the 
Government, 175; codperation with 
other government departments, 177; 

Famine relief, 120, 121; lines of work 
in order of importance, 189; methods, 
I7I 

Famine relief surtax, 71 

Famines, I; cures, 107; drought of 
1876-1879, 29; economic causes, 5; 


CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Famines (continued) 
economic cures, 107; fundamental 
cause, I9I; irrigation during, 120; 
natural causes, 36; natural cures, 
14t;)-North China, 1020-19213.) 2% 
3; political causes, 64; political cures, 
163; refugees, 110 (ill.); social causes, 
84>" social cures) 179; victims, sri 
Cll.) 

Fan Kung Dike, 49 

Farmers, 110; course of instruction by 
the Famine Commission, 179 (ill.); 
group of codperators, 183 (ill.) 

‘‘Farmers of Forty Centuries"’ (King), 
25 

Farming. See Agriculture 

Feasts, 93, 94, 185 

Fen Ho, 18 (map) 

Feng Yu-hsiang, colonization scheme, 
122 (ill.), 124; motor road built by, 
T2351") 

Fertility of the soil, 25 

Fertilizers, 96, 110 

Fish, 140; flood waters affording, 89 
(ills. ) 

Flood prevention, 150; famine labor in 
Hupeh, 173 (ill.); organizations, 72 

Floods, 23 (ills.), 36; area flooded by 
break in dike, 57 (ill.); areas flooded 
in 1924, 47 (map); areas subject to, 
56; deposits on farm land, 151” 
(ills.); Hunan in 1924, 39 Cills.); 
Kalgan in 1924, 69 (ill.); occurrence, 
45; refugees on dikes and in boats, 
117 (ills.); sailing over inundated 
fields in 1924, 187 (ill.); Shantung 
in 1925, 69 (ill.), 72; slow drainage 
of waters, 46 

Food, 1; bill of fare in famine time, 
2° concer; 1or, 763 Iconservation; 
139; exports and imports, 108; im- 
portation, 125; new crops, IIT; 
Overeating, 95; requirements not 
met, 13; unwholesome, 5 

Foot binding, 98, 185 

Foothills, 150 

Foreign goods, 135 

Foreign markets, 125, 126, 127 

Foreigners, 66 

Forest Service, 170 


INDEX 


Forestry, 4 

Forestry regiment, 170 

Forests, depletion, 28, 37; destruction 
at Western Tombs, 168, 169 (ill.); 
land where growth is possible, 169 
Gll.); rainfall and, 141 

Foundation Characters, 182 

Freeman, J. R., 48, 49, 152; on Yellow 
River control, 156 

Freight, 35; donkeys carrying, 103 
(ill.); rafts on the Yellow River, 
tir (ill.). See also Transportation 

Frontier movement, I2I, 123 


Frost, 162 
Frugality, 92 
Fruit, 140 
Fruit trees, 115 
Fuel, 116 


Fukien, 80; population distribution, 
19 (map) 

Fuller, M. L., 62 

Funerals, 93 (ill.), 94 


Ganiplesoonk) ss Lt 

Garden of Western China, 144 

German porcelain, 79 

Gilbert, Rodney, 132 

Good Roads Association, 138 

Government, 64, 67, 74, 75; authority, 
67; Famine Prevention Bureau sug- 
gestion, 175, 177; famine relief 
methods, 172; form, 164; monarchi- 
cal nature, 65; need of effective 
central, 125; present experiment, 
163; relief work, 70; stability re- 
quired, 164, 189; support for land 
utilization needed, 168 

Grain, 68; reserves, 168 

Grain dealers, 21 

Granaries. See Public granaries 

Grand Canal, 34, 48, 52, 153; American 
loan for improving, 74 

Grave mounds, 99 (ills.) 


Graves, 98, 99 (ills.). See also Burial 


Gray, G.AD29 

Great Wall at Kupehkow, 163 (ill.) 
Guam, 63 

Guilds, 106 


Gullies, 150 


195 


Hai Ho, 52; proposed flood channel, 
159 (map), 160 

Hail, 162 

Han River, dike building, 173 (ill.) 

Hann, Julius von, 43 

Hantan, 44 

Helpfulness, lack of, 106 

Highwaymen, 76 

Highways, 138. See also Roads 

Home, 119; burial at, 100; industries, 
127. See also Family 

Honan200407 41, 45) 00m L5on 100; 
flood of 1887-1889, 52 

Horvath pA wA,, 113 

Hosie, Alexander, on droughts, 38; 
on visitations of locusts, 59 

Households, 84 

Hsin An, flood around, 36 (ill.) 

Hughey ie linneel 21 

Huichow, cost of living, 12 

Human carriers, 32, 33 (ill.) 

Hunan, famine refugees, 74 (ill.); 
floods and their havoc in 1924, 39 
(ills.) 

Hungtze Lake, 48, 50, 152, 161 

Huntington, Ellsworth, on the north- 
ern and the southern Chinese, 83 

Hupeh, flood-prevention work, 173 (ill.) 

Hwa Shan, 189 (ill.) 

Hwai River, 48, 152; conservancy 
schemes, 49, 152, 153, 154 (map), 
155 (map) 

Hwailu-hsien, 30 

Hwang Ho. See Yellow River 


Ice, 116; fishing through, 89 (ill.); 
on flooded area in Chihli, 89 (ill.), 
116 

Idleness, 96, 97, 105, 172 

Illiteracy, 181 

Impey, Lawrence, 57, 117 

Incomes, 9, 10, II 

India, communications, 
relief #172 

Industrial development, 18, 125, 188; 
conservation and, IOI 

Initiative, 93 

Insect pests, 115 

Insurance, life, 
old-age, 90 


136; famine 


TOS ee lOCcuste (LOD 


196 


Integrity, lack of, 104 

Intensive cultivation, 25, 27 

Interest rates,<2,,2 122,924,120 

Inundation, 46, 116. See also Floods 

Irrigation, 3, 26, 115; Chengtu plain, 
142, 144; from a stream, 126 (ill.); 
great plains, 147; lifting water for, 
102 (ill.); old schemes, 144; Wei-pei 
plain, 145; wells and reservoirs, 148 


Japan, 15, 97; earthquake of 1923, 
60; population, 180 

Jobs, 97 

Junks, 133 (ill.), 138; chief means of 
transportation, 186 (ill.) 


Kalgan, 124; flood in 1924, 69 (ill.) 

Kan River, breaks in dikes, 55 (ill.), 
56 

Kansu, 41, 118; earthquake in 1920, 
60; earthquake and loess slide, 61 
Cll.) 

Kaoliang, 27 

Kiangsi, breaks in dikes, 
project of Famine 
173 (ill.); porcelain, 79 

Kiangsu, 15, 41, 42, 45, 48, 49; popu- 
lation distribution, 19 (map) 

Kine serie 25 

King father, 66 

King River, 145, 146 

Knibbs, G. H., 85 

Knitting machines, 128 

Kupehkow, Great Wall at, 163 (ill.) 

Kuyiian, 62 

Kwangsi, 118 

Kwangtung, 
Works, 72 

Kweichow, 78, 118 


56; dike 


Commission, 


Board of Conservancy 


Labor surplus, 18, 19, 77, 96 

Lace making, 128 

Lake drainage, 161 

Land, 3; farm land ruined by sand 
layer from flood, 151 (ill.); reclaimed 
by dike project, 157 (ill.); reclama- 
tion, 3, 161; registration fees for 
deeds, 70; unsettled, 118 

Language, difficulty of, 181 

Latrines, 96 


CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Liching, reversion works, 158 

bietw DS Kear3 

Likin, 79; abolition desirable, 135 

Lin, Dau-lang, 170 

Ling Nan Agricultural College, 114 

Literary Revolution, 182 

Loan associations, 24 

Loan sharks, 22 

Loans, 21, 129. See also Credit 

Locusts, 36; catching, 5 (ill.); efforts 
to solve problem, 161; migrations, 58 

Loess country, 60; cave dwellings in, 
61 (ill.); | Kansu earthquake, 61 
(ill.); railroad extension in, 134 (ill.) 

Looms, hand, 128 

Looting, 76 

Lowdermilk, W. C., 37, 150 

Lung, Ch’ien, 85, 108 

Lung Hai Railroad, 
(ill.) 


extension, 


134 


Machinery, 128, 134-135, 187 

Males, 88, 90, 91 

Mallory, W. H., 57 

Malone, C. B., 7 

Malena Rees 

Manchu house, 66, 85, 86, 163 

Manchuria,33928,532 762) 1189110" 
banditry, 124; labor movement 
into, 19; soy bean in, I12, I13 

Margin of livelihood, 5; lack of, 14 

Maritime Customs, population figures, 
85, 86; tariff rates, 134; trade reports, 
U7 

Maritime Dike, 49 

Markham, Edwin, 87 

Marriage, 91, 185 

Mat making, 165 (ills.) 

Migration, 2, 20; during famine, 120; 

refugees in Hunan, 74 (ill.); trend, 82 

Military leaders, 67, 75; defeated 
troops, 76; famine-prevention views, 





166; power, 164; revenues, 135; 
taxes imposed on the people, 79 
Millet, 27 
Min Chung, I15 
Min River, 56; distribution over 


Chengtu plain, 144 
Ming Dynasty, 108 
Mints, 132 


INDEX 


Misfortune, 106 

Missions, Christian, 88, 90 
Mohammedan Rebellion in 
1862, 86, 97 

Money, 132 

Money lenders, 22 

Mongolia, 3, 82, 118, 119 
Monogamy, 185 

Montandon, Raoul, 58, 59 
Moser, C. K., 135 

Mounds. See Grave mounds 
Mysticism, 90 


1861I- 





National Popular Education Associa- 
tion, 182 

Natural calamities, 141, 162 

Natural resources, 92, 125, 188 
Negligence, official, 69 (ills.), 72 
Nelson, J. H., 171 

Noncoéperation, 71, 104, 106, 188 
North China, famine of 1920-1921, 2, 3 








Officials, 94, 105; corruption, 68, 70, 
80, 188; negligence, 69 (ills.), 72 

Oil cans, 92 

Old-age insurance, 90 

One man, one job, 97 

Opium, 80, 170; poppies on grain land, 
80, 81 (ill.) 

Organization, 106; lack of, 66, 67 

Overcrowding, 15, 17, 191; colonization 
to relieve, 118; government action 
needed, 82; poverty the result of, 179 

Overeating, 95 


Pacifism, 64 

Pan-Pacific Food Conservation Con- 
ference, on locusts, 162 

Parental obligation, 90 

Parker, E. H., 84, 85 

Paternalism, 65 

Pawnshops, 21 

Peanuts, III 

Pearl River, 160 

Peculation, 105 

Pei Ho, 53 

Peking, 67, 124, 136; currency bureau, 
132; income estimate, II; street 
cars, 171; universities, funds for, 71 

Peking-Mukden Railway, 32 


197 


Peking-Suiyuan Railway, 124 

Persian wheels, 144 

Philippines, 112 

Pile driver, native, 127 (ill.) 

Plain, great eastern, 45 

Plains, irrigation on, 147 

Plant diseases, I15 

Plant improvement, I14 

Plow, native, 27 (ill.) 

Political conditions, disorganization, 4 

Pooling of resources by families, 24 

Poppy, 80, 170; on grain land, 81 
Cll.) 

Population, 10; checks, 17; Chinese 
statistics, 84; density, I5, 16 (map); 
increase, 108, 180; problem, I91; 
reduction, 183. See also Overcrowd- 
ing 

Porcelain, 79 

Post Office, population figures, 85, 86 

Potatoes, III, 140 

Poverty, overpopulation the cause of, 
179 

Power, native, pumping plant, 102 
(ill.) 

Poyang Lake, 56, 161 

Prayer for rain, 44 

Prevention. See Famine prevention; 
Flood prevention 

Productivity, 179, 180; industrial, 128 

Public granaries, 68, 139; abolition, 67 

Public Works Departments, 177 

Pumps, 102 (ill.), 148 


Rafts on Yellow River, 111 (ill.) 

Raiffeisen credit societies, 129 

Railways, 30, 136; appropriation of 
revenues, 74, 79; freight, 35; loans, 
75; need of, 138 

Rainfall, 36; forests and, 141; lack of, 
38; normal, 42; prayer of Tao 
Kwang for, 44. See also Droughts 

Read, B. E., 9 

Rebuilding, lack of, 98 

Reclamation of land, 3, 157 (ill.), 161 

Red Cross. See American Red Cross 

Reeds for mats, 165 (ill.) 

Reforestation, 116 

Reforms, 182 

Refrigeration, 139-140 


198 


Religion, 88, 90 

Republic, 67, 163 

Reservoirs, 149, 152 

Revenue, new methods of obtaining, 70 

Revolution of I911, 64, 66 

Rice, 26, 445° drys fields, 615 Gil); 
fields in Szechwan, 107 (ill.); flood 
loss, 50; insect pest, 115; method of 
growing, 28; native huller, 26 (ill.); 
overeating, 96; tax on, 79; yield, 13 

Rickshaw man, 92 

Riddell, Lord, 126 

Rivers, 36, 138; control of courses, 3, 
150, 158; diking, 71; General Wu’s 
ideas of control, 166; silt, 45 

Roads, 105; carts in wet weather, 
135 (ill.); Famine Commission roads, 
137, (ills.), °238>" Red Cross: plans of 
construction, 174; repairs neglected, 
105; width, 167 

Rockhill, W. W., 86 

Roxby, P. M., 85 

Ruins, 97 


Sale of women and children, 2 

Salutation, I 

Sand layer on farm land, 151 (ill.) 

Sawmill, native, 165 (ill.) 

Schools, 109; foreign, in China, 187 

Science, 104 

Scientific agriculture, 109, 179 

Shanghai, 52, 63 

Shansi, 29, 40, 60; deforestation, 37; 
population distribution, 18 (map); 
wages, II—I2 

Shantung, 15, 40, 45, 158, 160; flood 
OfALO25 22. (ills. M52 moons) a7 
labor movement from, 19; population 
distribution, 17 (map) 

Shensi, 29, 30, 40, 60; irrigation, 145, 
146 (with map); motor road and 
cart road, 137 (ill.); refuge from 
bandits, 77 (ill.); tree planting, 143 
Gll.); wood lot, 15 (ill.) 

Shensi Irrigation Scheme, 73 (ills.) 

Siang River, 56 

Sibert, W. L., 49 

Silk, improvement, I14 

Silt, 45, 60, 152; layer left by flood, 
151 (ill.) 


CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE 


Silver dollar, 132 

Smith, Adam, 136 

Smith, Arthur, 84 

Soil, 13; enrichment from floods, 148; 
maintenance of fertility, 25; river 
deposits, 46 

Soldiers, cost of 
See also Armies 

Son of Heaven, 65 

Soy bean, 112 

Soy bean flour, 113 

Speculation in cereals, 68 

Standard of living, 9, 78, 107, 125 

Standard Oil Co., 92; steamer on the 
Yangtze, 133 (ill.) 

Starvation, I 

Statistics, 5; collection by Relief 
Commission in 1922, 7; population, 
Chinese figures, 84 

Steamboats, 34, 138 

Stockton, Sir Edwin, 126 

Storage, food, 139; grain, 68; water, 
149 

Storms, 162 

Suiyuan, 140 

Surtax, famine relief, 71 

Sissmuilch| 2 Pec17 

Swan pan, 132 

Swatow, 63 

Szechwan, 136; rice fields, 107 (ill.); 
strife with Kweichow, 78; terraced 
fields, 14 (ill.) 


maintenance, 78. 


layGhenyl2, 1120 

Taiping Rebellion, 66, 86 

Talifu, 63 

Tanks. See Reservoirs 

Tao Kwang, prayer for rain, 44 

Tariff conference, 134 

Taxes, 79; likin, 79, 135; new -im- 
posts, 70; remission, 41-42; remis- 
sion in famine years, 70; rice, 79 

sLayler | 3.4475.0, 10 

Tea, improvement, I14 

Terraces, 26; destruction by rains, 56; 
Szechwan, 14 (ill.) 

Thrift societies, 185 

Tibet, 68, I19 

Tientsin, 29, 
in 1917, 56 


2, 124, 160; dike break 


INDEX 


Timber, 28 

Time, waste of, 96 

Ting-fang, Wu, 126 

Todas Oe) 4a 58 

Transit taxes, 79, 135 

Transportation, 3; better facilities 
needed, 136; donkeys as carriers, 
103. (ill.); inefficient methods, 32; 
junke e133) e(ills)s1 30,0450). ll.) 
political hindrance, 74; water hauls, 
32 (ill.), 34 

Travel, chairs for, 103 (ill.) 

Treaties, 135 

Trees, 29, 116; broken by ice, 116; 
occurrence in northern China, 143 
(ill.); planting, 115, 141; planting 
in foothills and gullies, 150; planting 
in Shensi, 143 (ill.); watering, 142 

Troops, excess, 77; forestry regiment, 
170; trains, 75 (with ill.). See also 
Armies 

Tsao Ngo River, 56 

T’u Shu Tsih Ch’eng, 38 

Tungkwan, 54 (ill.) 

Tungting Lake, 161 

Twain, Mark, 64 

Twitchell, H., 68, 70 

Typhoons, 63, 141, 162 


United States, loan for improving the 
Grand Canal, 74 

U. S. Department of Commerce, on 
business progress, I7I 

Usury, 22 


Vayssiére, Paul, 58 

Vehicles, horse and mule-drawn, 32 
Vernyi, 60 

Village industries, 19, 127 

Villagers, 1 (ill.) 


Wages, 128; Shansi, 11-12 

Waste, 93; in ceremonies and feasts, 
93, 185; of food by overeating, 95; 
of fruit, 140; of time, 96; utilizing, 
26, 92, 96 

Water, transportation by, 32 (ill.), 34 

Water buffalo, 31 (ill.) 


199 


Wei Ho, 115; earthquake in valley in 
1556, 60; valley, 146 (with map) 

Wei-pei plain, 145 

Wells, irrigation from, 148 

Wen-Hao, Wong, 60 

West Lake, 86 

West River, 56 

Western civilization, 186 

Western Tombs, 168; forest destruction, 
168, 169 (ill.) 

Wheat, 27, 43, 114; floods and the crop, 
53s yield13 

Wheelbarrows, 32, 34; native, 31 (ill.) 

Widows, 91, 92 

Williams, S. Wells, 44 

Women, emancipation, 186 

Wood, 28, 115; scarcity, 141 (ill.) 

Wood lots, 115; family, 118; Shensi, 
T5 (ill.) 

Wu Pei-fu, view of river control and 
famine prevention, 166 

Wu Ting-fang, 126 


Yangtze River, 34, 48, 49, 52, 56, 160; 
dikes built by the Famine Commis- 
SION @alS 7 illss) smjUnkse baa eels 
steamers, 133 (ill.) 

Yellow River, 34, 36; break in a dike 
in Shantung, 55. (ill.); Chinese 
along the middle reaches, 82; control, 
156; crops along, 147; dike system 
of lower course, 50-5I (map); 
dikes, 158; flood-prevention work, 
2; floods, 23 (ills.), 51; lower course 
and dikes, 54 (ill.); migrations, 52; 
migrations, historical, 49 (map); 
rafts of cowhide, 111 (ill.); Shantung 
flood in 1925, 69 (ill.), 72; upper 
reaches, 54 (ill.) 

Yen, ¥, Ga fJames—a13s2 

Yennanfu, 8 (ill.) 

WVeRiVir GaeAL si os 

Yii, Emperor, 2 

Yu-hsiang, Feng, colonization scheme, 
122 (ill.), 124; motor road built by, 
123 (ill.) 

Yu Tinn Hugh, 121 

Yung Ting Ho, 53, 148 

Yunnan, I18; earthquake of 1925, 62 


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China: land of famine, 


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